


Maelstrom

by iputthepaininpainting



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Adventure, Dragons, Fantasy, Magic, Original Character-centric, Original Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 12:59:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 55,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14356023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iputthepaininpainting/pseuds/iputthepaininpainting
Summary: Mirayah, a runaway slave in an unforgiving land, is irreversibly changed when she stumbles across a Dragon nest in the wilds of Dunía. The events that follow will shape the future of this land's history as Mirayah is plunged head-first into a life-and-death struggle of cosmic proportions.





	1. Two bodies, one soul

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my novel-series in progress, Maelstrom! Here I will be posting the first chunk of Maelstrom Book I. Call it a teaser. If you enjoy it let me know. If you have suggestions/ constructive criticism/ comments, also let me know! I'll publish this one of these days, so look forward to that if you like it!

Mirayah ran for her life.

She careened over gentle hills and rain-worn gullies, her bare feet snatching at the sandy soil with each stride. All around her there was empty space and empty sky, an ocean of grey-green grass melting into the grey-blue dawn. There was only her and her pursuers to disturb the monotony. Their figures left flattened swathes of grass behind them. Mirayah fixed her eyes on the dark line that marked the mountains ahead, making for that distant horizon with every scrap of her strength. Behind her the slavers kept pace, never close enough to reach out and bring her down, never far enough away that she could shake them.

Her heart, which was already racing, gave a shudder as the noise of the baying hounds increased. They could smell the desperation that seeped out of her pores, the sweat of her terror drifting back to their hungry noses. The slavers urged them on with whips, screaming at them to get her, get her, get her! And though her initial burst of panicked speed had left them in the dust, the dogs were gaining now. The blades of grass smacked her thighs and calves with every long stride, slicing her ragged leggings into ribbons. Blood dripped from countless tiny cuts, but she remained unaware of it. Pain and exhaustion had fallen into the background, overshadowed by the consuming need to _flee._

The pounding of the horse’s hooves was getting closer, so close she could feel it vibrating up into her legs. She’d had a few miles of head-start, but now that the riders had caught up with her, she didn’t have a chance on foot. A few more strides and the dogs would leap on her, biting her ankles and her arms, dragging her down like a wild beast. She fixed her satchel, took hold of the stolen belt knife in one hand, and threw herself forward with speed born out of sheer stubbornness.

 _“I cannot go back,”_ she panted to herself, _“I will not go back. They’ll have to kill me or I’ll kill myself first! I’ll be damned if I go!”_

A low roar greeted her ears as she crested the next hill. Hope gave her an extra turn of speed, and the distance between the hounds’ teeth and her heels lengthened. The noise sounded like water, and _fast_ water. She could swim. Any second the bank would come up and she would throw herself into the current. She’d let the melt-off from the mountains carry her away, and then she’d be gone off the opposite shore before the slavers could even start forging the stream. This was her chance.

The noise swelled. As she ran she tightened down the knots on her parcel, not wishing to lose it in the current. She didn’t notice the dogs peel off behind her, whining in protest, and she didn’t notice the horses rear to a screaming halt, refusing to go another step out of sheer terror. Her head was ducked and so she didn’t notice the shadow that was descending from the sky, and when she heard the startled shouts of the men she assumed it was because they knew what she was going to do. If only she could find the river!

Just a few yards off here was a depression in the ground, she now saw. She assumed it was a wide bank of the river, hidden from view by the screens of grass. She stumbled once, got back up, ducked her head and threw her arms out as she plunged down into the water-

-the water which wasn’t there. With a shout, she felt herself pitch headfirst into a deep, moist pit. She rolled in a tumble of legs and arms to the bottom, bruising herself thoroughly on the way. The distant roaring had stopped, and all she heard was that deep growl- not of water, but of a creature. A big creature. She groaned and sat up, her vision swimming. Other than the growling and her desperate panting, all was silent. With an ominous feeling of imminent danger, like a rabbit cowering before a wolf, she struggled upright on her knees and turned to see the source of the deceptive noise.

There, standing above her by more than fifteen feet, was the serpentine shape of a Wild Dragon. Bat-wings the size of sails stretched out above her in a defensive pose as the thing hissed, lashing its long, spiked tail. The plated frill behind the crown of its head vibrated in warning. With a shrill scream Mirayah scrambled backwards, feeling her hands sink into the sandy, wet soil. The thing didn’t advance, but turned and looked up, its wedge-shaped head pricking as if it had noticed something.

Yet another shadow, this one huger and darker and colder than the first, fell over her from behind. With dread churning in her stomach she looked up and saw a second one of the beasts, this one with wings half-folded and the smell of char and blood on its hot breath. She froze in place as it lowered its head toward her, the long neck bending with the grace of a crane. The smaller one’s defensive pose had relaxed in the absence of the dogs, horses, and men, whose fates Mirayah did not want to think about.

The big Dragon drew its beak-like snout over the top of her hair, nostrils flaring to vent a puff of smoke. Its mouth opened slightly to let in the scent of her. It inhaled and exhaled several times as she sat there, paralyzed with terror. It was breathing her in, tasting her, examining her with its huge sparkling eyes like gems. As the morning light brightened she noticed that the big one was all covered in flat scales like plates of beaten gold, and the smaller one in scales of silver that shimmered as it moved. Both of their armor was pierced in multiple places, sullied with dried blood and accumulated dirt. Their wings were torn and the gold one was missing the tip of its tail.

The golden Dragon left off its inspection of her. It turned away as if it was bored, heading back towards where Mirayah imagined the corpses of her pursuers lay. She looked around with wild eyes, not sure how she was still alive but taking it as a sign that some divine providence was looking down upon her. Slowly, so not to startle either of the beasts, she began to scoot up towards the lip of the pit. She got a few feet away and rose up to a crouch before the silver one whipped around and hissed at her as if warning her not to take another step. The girl threw her hands up and immediately sat back down where she was.

With faint interest and curiosity, she watched as the Dragon slipped down to the bottom of the depression, where it was warmest and wettest, and curled around it protectively. The dirt radiated unnatural heat. There was a loose, lumpy sort of inconsistency in the soil of the bottom, she saw, as if something had been buried and reburied multiple times, close to the surface. Mirayah narrowed her eyes. The silver dragon, who Mirayah assumed was the female, scraped at the dirt with her long jet-black talons. The dam bent her head and breathed light dribbles of fire down into the soil. The moisture steamed with the heat, and as Mirayah scrutinized the area she noticed several objects hiding underneath. The objects were round and oblong in shape, like watermelons. Their surfaces were vaguely opaque and shimmering, smoothed out by long exposure to mineral-rich water and intense heat.

 _“Shit!”_ she thought, her eyes widening. _“This is a nest! I’ve stumbled into a Wild Dragon nest! They’re gonna feed me to their hatchlings!”_

She shivered with horror, almost wishing that the slavers were still the worst of her problems. Before, at least, she had had a desperate chance of escaping alive. Now, with two savage beasts watching her every move, there was nothing she could do. They would certainly kill her.

Mirayah spent a moment watching the female Dragon fuss over her eggs with wide, staring eyes. In her mind she was weighing her options, trying her hardest not to lose her head. The slavers were gone- that much she could infer by the silence behind her, and the smell of char. She wasn’t going back into chains, at least, but at the moment she had bigger problems.  
On one hand, she could accept her destiny as hatchling-food and die that way. On the other hand, she could attempt a wild flight and _possibly_ get away with her life. Chances were great that the Dragons would be faster than her, and the silver one would slash her down before she even got out of the nest. If she escaped the pit, the golden one would easily catch her before she got too far. Even though the two Dragons were torn-up, battered, and bloodied, they were far too powerful for her to challenge. But even so… even so, there was the tiniest sliver of a chance that, if she was very lucky, she could slip away. So she would make a break for it. She would rather take that smallest of chances than accept death like a quivering rabbit.

She turned in place, taking care that none of her movements were noticeable. Just a few minutes ago, the world had been steeped in grey, so monotone in the pre-dawn light that all shape and shadow was lost. But now she could make out a soft glow of yellow, cresting over the eastern horizon. In a few minutes the entire sky would fracture into orange and pink. The dew-laden air tasted as fresh as the spring it heralded. Mirayah took a deep breath of it, wondering if this was the last dawn she’d ever see, the end of the life she had fought so hard to keep.  
Her hand wrapped around the handle of the belt knife, though she doubted it would do much good if she had to use it. She gathered her bare feet underneath herself, dug fingers and toes into the dirt for purchase, and glanced at the silver Dragon. She assumed that the silver was the female and the golden one, who she couldn’t see at the moment, was the male. The female was preoccupied with her eggs, not minding the unfortunate girl. Mirayah steeled herself, took a last glance at the sunrise, and then lunged forward-

She made it two steps, caught a glimpse of the sky beyond the lip of the pit, and then a massive weight plowed into her. It pressed her down into the dirt, jarring the knife from her fingers. The breath wheezed out of her lungs. She lay coughing and heaving as the silver Dragon looked down at her accusingly. The dam had one front paw settled square on her chest, just hard enough to pin her down. The creature swept her tail forward to flick the knife away, out of reach. Her gaze was almost disdainful.

 _“Now why would you try a silly thing like that?”_ her sharp eyes seemed to say.

Just then the golden one returned, bearing in its beak the bloody, mangled haunch of one of the slavers’ horses. The flesh was seared and ripped, as if the Dragon had been purposefully softening it up. Mirayah gagged at the rank, charred scent of it. But the golden dragon, who was presumably the sire, overpassed Mirayah completely. Instead he laid the meat down on the ground next to the clutch of eggs in the bottom of the nest.

“What… what’s going on?” she wondered aloud. The less she struggled the easier it was to breathe, and so she lay still. “If they’re going to feed the horse meat to the young instead of me, then why are they keeping me here?”

She turned to look back up at the silver Dragon, who was still watching her. She whispered to it-

“Why do you need me? What do you want from me?”

And she wondered what these creatures saw in her that drove them to pluck her from the slavers’ grasp. A shiver passed through her body the longer she held that hypnotic silver gaze. The Dragon’s intelligent eyes seemed to be piercing into the very core of her soul, though what she was searching for, Mirayah had no idea.

Just then, the sun broke on the horizon. Within a minute the sky lit up in streaks of fire and crystal blue, laid side-by-side like huge strokes of paint. In the tender light Mirayah saw the eggs take on a luminous quality. Most of their haloes were faint, more of a by-product of their opalescent surface than of what rested inside. They seemed almost dull. But one egg, the one in the center of the warm clutch, glowed brighter than the others. It seemed alive even from where she lay, as if she could feel the heart within beating.

Now that the threat on her life seemed to be past, Mirayah regarded the proceedings with an almost analytical curiosity. Something told her that there would only be one offspring, now. Though the clutch held somewhere around a dozen eggs, only the brightly glowing one appeared to have a living hatchling inside. She had heard that this happened often nowadays. With the infamous DragonRider Order long dead, the Dragons were a dying race. Even back when Dragons had ruled supreme over the land of Dunía, only a few offspring out of many would live. Back then, the legends said, five out of a dozen eggs would usually hatch. Now, with the Dragons only holding onto survival by the tips of their talons, just one or two hatchlings made it- if they were lucky. The odds of survival for a Wild Dragon in Dunía were slim.

But Mirayah hoped that the tiny hatchling would live. She felt a certain kinship with them now, and something close to gratitude. She was alive and free because of them, and that was what mattered to her.

The dam lifted her paw at last and let Mirayah up, shooting her a warning glare that said fleeing would only earn trouble. The girl drew her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around herself protectively. She watched the morning light slowly grow and spread, tapping her fingers rapidly to preserve her sense of calm. The beasts may have let her live for now, but they could slaughter her at their leisure, and she knew it. It paid well to keep a cool head around them, touchy as they were.

The Dragons were very occupied now with the eggs, specifically the live one. They took turns breathing puffs and dribbles of fire down into the clutch. Clouds of warm steam billowed outward. Mirayah noticed now, with the clarity of day, that the Dragons were not just injured. They were torn nearly to pieces. The sire wasn’t just missing the end of his tail, but a piece of his frill and one of his hind talons as well. He limped heavily and he couldn’t fold one of his wings all the way. The dam was in worse shape- long scores gouged her sides, and her wings were so tattered and mangled that Mirayah knew she would never fly again. These injuries were not fresh either- they had been made days, possibly even weeks ago. Streaks of mud mingled with smears of rust-colored blood and some black substance that had caked itself over their scales.

She thought, _“What could do something like this?”_

It made her uneasy, to see such powerful creatures brought so low. Whatever creature had ripped them up must have been a true menace, and that menace could still be around. The thought made Mirayah shiver. She wished she could ask them how they’d been hurt. But Wild Dragons were mute, unable to communicate in the way Rider Dragons had supposedly been able to. So she just watched in silence. 

Eventually they began to separate the dead eggs away from the live one, nudging the dull orbs away with their beaks. The lifeless shells had served as insulation for the living hatchling, but now it needed space. The dam lovingly gathered the dead eggs into a group to the side, keeping them warm underneath her crouched body as if she knew they had passed away but couldn’t bear to discard them. As she did this, the sire scraped away more of the soil so the live egg lay bare, kept warm only by the occasional breath of fire. Long minutes passed of simply sitting and waiting. The dam occasionally glanced at Mirayah as if to make sure she was still there, waiting with them.

At last, before Mirayah's wide wondering eyes, the egg began to rock: slowly, with tiny and inconsistent motions. As the motions intensified the sire laid his head down next to it. He let out a long, unsteady sigh, like he was struggling to stay awake. His gaze remained trained on the twitching egg, but his eyelids drooped. The dam was still intent on the egg, but as she shifted restlessly one of the wounds in her flank split again and began to leak fresh scarlet ribbons of blood. She seemed not to notice, though Mirayah watched with concern.

A ringing _crack_ , like the splitting of a tree limb under a lightning bolt, startled Mirayah. She jumped, then sat still once more when both Dragons glared at her. A second crack followed, and then a third, and a small rent appeared in the rock-hard surface. The hatchling within was struggling now, prying with the tip of its beak and its claws to widen the crack. Two more strikes broke the eggshell partially open. The thing gave a long, piteous cry as the light of day and the spring air rushed over its face for the first time. 

Mirayah watched, fascinated. The little creature – or what she could see of it, at least- seemed to be calling out to her with its noises. Beckoning her. The egg continued to rock and twitch while the tiny black claws scraped for purchase, but after several long minutes it made no further progress. Its cries of distress intensified. Mirayah looked from the sire to dam to the sire again, first with anticipation, then with anger as they continued to lay inert.

“Well?” she exclaimed aloud, “Are you gonna do something?”

The sire’s eyes had slipped closed. The eyelids fluttered once at her exclamation, but she could see by the rise and fall of his chest that he was laboring to breathe. The dam too had sunk down, laying her head close to the struggling hatchling. She had curled her body around her dead eggs, so now the blood leaking down her flank began to dribble over the dull shells. Her eyes were still open, however, and she flicked them to Mirayah. There was desperation there- a cry for help.

 _“Save my little one,”_ she seemed to be asking _“I am too weak. This is why we rescued you. Save my little one.”_

Slowly, Mirayah rose to her feet, constantly aware of the hatchling’s distressed cries. They occupied her mind completely, worming into her ears and writhing within her skull. The first few steps she took were tentative. She waited for one of the Dragons to rise up and challenge her. But the dam just watched, her gaze piercing and clear. When it became obvious to Mirayah that they weren’t going to retaliate, she scrambled down the bank of the nest into the bottom again. The soil was hot underneath her legs, like she was laying close to the warmth of a fire. She fell to her knees by the little hatchling, which regarded her from inside with one watery silver eye. It was a female, then. Mirayah drew her knife and slid the blade into the corner of the crack, where it was narrowest, took the handle in her right hand, wrapped her left hand around the end of the egg, and then began to lean her weight on the knife. The prying motion opened the crack wider, and the excited hatchling once again began to attack the inside of the shell. The rock-hard pieces began to fall away now, unable to withstand attack from both within and without. 

Finally, with a growl and a snap, the tiny Dragon poked its head out and wriggled, drawing first its shoulders, then its front legs, then its wings, and then its hind legs out of the eggshell. The baby was surprisingly dry, Mirayah noticed, as if the fluid inside the shell had been burnt to nothing by the constant heat. With a final heave from both parts, the Dragonet tumbled out of the shell backward. There she lay wriggling on her back, unsure how to use her limbs to roll herself over. She made short, gasping, croaking noises as she started to breath air for the first time. Mirayah watched with wondering eyes, taking in every detail.

The Dragonet’s stunted wings lay pressed against her spine. Her mouth, which opened and closed with each cry, had no teeth in the back of her jaw like the adults did. A black ridge like curling waves ran down her spine, though there was a gap between her shoulder blades and the bases of her wings. Her head was wedge-shaped, with a frill of nine oblong, flat bone plates arranged in a neat crown around the back of her head. Silver scales, like glimmering mirrors each, covered the rest of her body. The color was more steely blue on her flanks, and lighter like platinum on the long flat scales on her underbelly. 

She was only the size of a kitten, though longer and of different proportions. Her infantile body was different from the adults: misshapen, un-graceful. Her head seemed too big on her skinny neck, her legs were like twigs, and her whip-thin tail was too long. Her paws were much bigger than they needed to be, and her ebony claws were murderously sharp compared to the softness of the rest of her.

Mirayah swept the broken shell aside to make room for the struggling baby. As the hatchling finally got her feet underneath her Mirayah scooted away, looking at the dam in uncertainty. The silver Dragon was too busy admiring her new offspring to notice Mirayah. But the dam’s eyelids were drooping too now, and a glance at the father told Mirayah that he was dead or close to death. She felt a stir of pity wake in her chest as she beheld the tiny hatchling, soon to be an orphan. The Dragonet wriggled up to its dam on unsteady legs, sniffing at her snout as if waiting for her to do something, to say something. The dam huffed, gave a groan, and curled her thin lips in what might have been the Dragonish equivalent of a smile. Then she turned her head towards Mirayah, weakly, as if urging the hatchling to go to her. The girl lurched backwards.

“Who, me? No, no, no, I don’t know the first thing about-”

The dam’s eyes were already closing. The hatchling vacillated, taking one step toward her dam and one toward Mirayah, torn. Neither party was particularly welcoming- the human looked terrified, and the dam’s breathing was ominously labored. Finally the hatchling sat down and threw its head back, letting out a wail of grief. Mirayah felt her heart tighten at the pitiful sound. Some instinct rose up from deep, deep within her and pushed her forward. She rose, crossed the nest, and then fell to one knee at the hatchling’s side, stretching out her arms toward the lost baby and cooing softly. The dam heard the exchange and let out a satisfied sigh, as if she knew she had done all she could to protect her offspring, and now it was out of her hands.

The little Dragon crawled over and Mirayah set her other knee down as well, folding her bare feet underneath her and inviting the creature into her lap. The baby made a little mewling noise, but approached her without fear and crawled up into her arms. The moment the Dragonet came close, Mirayah became aware of a vague, low humming in the air. She hadn’t actually touched the creature yet- the talons were hanging on the material of her trousers and the thing’s flank was pressed up against her tunic sleeve- but it was stretching out its nose toward her hand, as if asking to be touched. The girl obligingly lowered her hand and laid it alongside its cheek.

“ _Argh!_ Shit!”

Mirayah cursed aloud as a sudden shock, like a bolt of lightning, jumped from the Dragon into her. She felt like her blood was boiling, her flesh was crawling, but oh how sweet a pain it was! Up her arm the heat raced, to her chest, into her pumping heart and then down through the rest of her body. Gasping, she tried to stand, stumbled, and fell on her side in the dir. She caught her head and pulled it down between her knees in an attempt to deal with the agony. She couldn’t even draw breath to scream, but she tasted blood as she bit her own cheek. That vague humming had increased in volume and intensity until she felt like it was emanating from her very bones, shaking her to the core. Suddenly there seemed to be a presence in the air, some manifestation of consciousness that Mirayah registered only with her sixth sense. It flooded like a wave of warm water through her, wiping the slate of her tumultuous mind.  
How bizarre was this sensation, as if her body had been an empty husk before, and now something was spilling into her, more powerful than the force of a flood. It was filling every crevice, every crack, every yawning and painful hole she hadn’t known was there. Mirayah brimmed with pulsing life, fit to burst at the seams. That extra consciousness was fusing itself with her own, winding up inside of her and tying the loose ends of her soul up into its own. The cauterization of these bonds seared hot and bright inside her, agonizing, but so sweet that Mirayah couldn’t help but embrace it, enjoy it, accept it. For the first time in her entire life she felt whole.

Mirayah slowly uncurled from her fetal position, laying her cheek in the warm soil. Her rigid muscles were cramping and un-cramping at intervals, re-arranging themselves, slowly settling back over her bones from where they’d been uprooted. The pain was fading now, leaving behind a hot, tingling glow. The only tangible sensation she had was the huge patch of hurt that spread over her chest, shoulders, and neck. Her skin prickled and stung there, like she’d been branded. The Dragonet, who had sat and watched all of this with an unsurprised expression, now rose and padded over near the girl’s slowly rising and falling chest.

“What… did you do to me?” Mirayah murmured sleepily, struggling to stay awake. She felt exhausted, like she had just run the length and breadth of all Dunía. She couldn’t make her limbs obey her, and it was all she could do to focus her eyes on the Dragonet. It sat down by her shoulder, bending its face over hers and gazing down with a benevolence. There was an unnatural intelligence in those quicksilver eyes. The creature was only a few minutes old, yet those eyes had the wisdom of centuries peering out of them.

 _“We are one now, you and I,”_ the Dragonet told Mirayah, her voice echoing inside of the girl’s skull. She had no idea how she knew it was the hatchling that spoke- its voice resonated not in her ears, but within the confines of her mind, disembodied- and yet she knew it was the Dragon that was speaking.

As the baby curled up between the crook of Mirayah’s neck and shoulder she asked-

“One… what does… that mean?”

_“Two bodies, one soul, Mirayah. We are one.”_

The girl’s wanted to ask for an explanation, but it was getting harder to stay awake. Her eyes flickered and closed at last. She couldn’t fight the oncoming darkness a moment longer. Exhausted, worn-out, changed beyond recognition, she passed out of the waking world.

...

A couple of gnats gathered around the scabbed-over cuts on Mirayah’s legs while she lay sleeping during the day. But as evening crept over the plains, the temperature fell and the gnats dispersed. Just as the sun’s last light was buried beneath the mountains in the west, a front rolled in from the south. The parched earth gasped with relief as the rain flushed over swathes of grass, churning the dust into mud.

Mirayah did not notice the rain at first; she was still unconscious. The first few drops that speckled her face went unheeded. The next few made her twitch. Then, as the rain gathered and swelled, a rivulet of cool water dribbled across the feverish skin of her neck and chest, pooling in the hollow of her collarbone. That promptly brought her back into awareness. A shudder ran through her body, and then her eyes twitched open.

The girl sat up with a groan, immediately leaning her head into her hands. She remained there for a long moment, gathering her wits about her. Then she pushed herself up onto her knees to look around. There was no visible moon that night, nor were there stars. The velvety blackness was nearly complete. And yet, when she glanced around she could very clearly make out the outlines of the two dead Dragons’ bodies. Tiny slivers of light gleamed off the edges of their scales. Just beyond them, the horse haunch looked like it had been fed on by something. There were chunks of flesh missing.

If Mirayah had doubted before, the sight of the mangled corpses served as proof. The surreal events of that morning had been very real, as evidenced by the burning ache that covered her chest and the walls of the pit that surrounded her. This was not a nightmare, nor was it a hallucination.

Which meant that somewhere around here, there was a baby Dragon that she was responsible for.

“Little one? Little one, where are you?” she called out, her voice soft and tentative as if she feared what might hear her in the night. The thought that the creature that had attacked and killed the hatchling’s sire and dam could still be around chilled Mirayah to her very core.

She clambered to her feet and was trying to decide which direction she ought to look in when something said from behind her-

_“I am here, Mirayah.”_

She gave a monumental start, whipped around too fast, lost her footing in the mud, and landed flat on her backside with an ‘oof!’. She turned just in time to watch the Dragonet emerge from the grass and slide down the side of the nest on her tiny legs. Mud splattered as she bounded to a stop by Mirayah. Fearing that the hatchling’s touch would shock her again, the girl scooted away in the dirt

 _“Please, do not look so scared,”_ the Dragonet begged, crouching low to the ground. Her wide silver eyes regarded Mirayah pitifully. _“I did not mean to hurt you. It will not happen again.”_

“You… You can speak,” she stammered. When the hatchling drew near she didn’t flinch this time. With tentative fingers, she reached out a hand to stroke the thing’s head. The baby accepted the touch with a happy croon and replied,

_“Of course I can speak. I am not Wild.”_

Mirayah glanced to her right at the hulk of the two dead Dragons, then back at the hatchling.

“If you’re not Wild like them… then what are you?”

 _“Has it not occurred to you yet?”_ laughed the Dragonet.

“What?”

_“Mirayah, you are a DragonRider now. My Rider.”_

The girl’s hand paused mid-stroke, and though the hatchling made a noise of protest that the cosseting had stopped, Mirayah was deaf to it. All the turning wheels in her head had momentarily ground to a halt. She stared at the embankment opposite her, glaring at it as if she could wring answers from the dirt by doing so. But there was nothing to see.

Slowly, deliberately, she laid down on her back again. Her head was still spinning a little. She covered her forehead with one hand and squinted up into the pitch-black sky. The whipping rain drops beat on her skin and the tatters of her clothes. A sigh escaped her lips; the water’s cool touch was soothing. It seeped into the pores of her skin and flushed the feverish heat from her bones. 

The hatchling knew enough not to speak anymore. The little creature simply curled her lips in the Dragon-ish equivalent of a smile, and nosed her way under Mirayah’s arm. There the two remained for a long time, breathing in the scent of rain against the parched earth.

At length, when the sensitive skin on Mirayah’s chest had cooled and her headache had cleared somewhat, she asked the Dragonet:

“What’s your name, then?”

_“Whatever name you give me.”_

“Oh. Is it my responsibility?”

_“Of course. Naming is one of the first things a Dragon and Rider do together.”_

“How would you know?” the girl challenged, more than a little annoyed. “You’re a day old for fuck’s sake!”

_“I inherit the ancestral memory of thousands of years of Dragons.”_

“…Right. Because you’re not Wild. You’re… what’s the word?”

_“Bonded. I am Bonded with you, and this gives me the power of speech and the memory of my race. And I am given your memory as well. Everything you have felt, I have felt. Everything you know, so do I. Everything you remember, I remember as if it were my own life. I was not jesting when I told you that we are one, now.”_

Mirayah sighed, too tired to be confused. Unbidden, her fingers found the itchy spot underneath the hatchling’s frill and scratched it. The rain had soaked them both to the core by now, but the girl welcomed the feeling. It was the only thing keeping her grounded at the moment.

“I have a lot of questions for you, little one,” she stated at last, “but not right now. I think right now we need to keep moving.”

_“You are exhausted, Mirayah. I can feel how weary you are.”_

“If what you say is true and you’ve seen my memory, you should know why we have to keep moving. And the stakes… fuck, the stakes are so much higher now.”

_“If move we must, then move we shall. But tell me this, Mirayah: where will we go?”_

She didn’t answer. Instead she heaved herself to her feet, scooping the hatchling up in one arm. The creature settled with her claws hooked in the fabric of Mirayah’s shirt and her head over the girl’s shoulder, so she could watch her face with one eye. Mirayah made sure she still had her belt knife. She fetched her little canvas parcel- everything she owned in the world- and slung it over her other shoulder.

Mirayah was cold and covered in mud. Long, wet ropes of hair had pasted themselves over her face and neck. She swept these out of her eyes, and then made for the top of the embankment, out of the nest. She had to haul herself over the edge with one elbow. Everything from the tips of her fingers to the soles of her feet still _hurt_. Each movement was a trial. But she forced herself to stand up again. She looked around her at the vast expanses of the plains, getting her bearings once again.

The landscape was steeped in a deep darkness, but with her newly sharpened eyes she could still make out the shape of the mountains to the west. And to the northeast lay the highway, which she had been following from a distance up until recently. It pointed the way to her next place of sanctuary: a Stopover. Stopovers were supposed to be friendly places where escaped slaves could rest in secret on their way to freedom. The Route- that fabled path to the Northern Forests, where a slave could slip from the clutches of Dunían men and scrape out a new   
life- followed these Stopovers across the country. Many slaves before Mirayah had risked taking the Route, and her original plan had been to follow in their footsteps.

The previous day, her choice would have been simple. Take the road. Follow the Route. Find the next Stopover, get a little help, and then keep running even if she had to cross the entirety of the continent of Dunía. Strike north to the forests, to the place the slaves had named ‘New Sevhara’ after their ancestral homeland. Start her life anew, in freedom.  
That had been the original plan. But now, what use was it? As far as Mirayah knew, this creature was the only Dragon hatchling in existence, and she, Mirayah, was the first DragonRider in a thousand years. Was it wisdom or folly to seek civilization, when she had such a precious charge to protect? The girl bit her lip and looked back and forth, one way and the other. Northeast to the highway, to the possibility of human comfort. West to the mountains, where no man dared set foot. Where no man would follow and no man would bother her, molest her, question or apprehend her. Both had their own unique dangers. Both had their own unique advantages.

Mirayah took one step west, unable to deny the pull of the wilderness where her only concerns would the challenges nature could throw at her. Nature was a familiar foe, whose patterns she’d learned to interpret a long time ago. People were the dangerous animals, the ones she could never predict. But after that one step, her other sensibilities won out. She wouldn’t get far in this state, not if she didn’t rest and re-supply. Mirayah sighed, wrapped her arms around the Dragonet’s warm body, and turned northeast.

...

Behind her, the only sign that she’d ever been there was the imprint of her body that she’d left in the mud. This was quickly dissolving as water pooled around it. The Dragons’ two corpses seemed to have lost their glimmer, now that the girl had carried their only offspring away. The nest they’d so lovingly dug would become their grave, once the elements brought the earth walls down on top of them. 


	2. The meaning of a name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirayah finally names her Dragonet, but her plan goes sideways very quickly as an insidious new danger raises its head.

“Riddle me this then, little know-it-all: if there hasn’t been a DragonRider in a thousand years, why did your parents decide to make one now?”

_“Well first of all, they did not make you into a Rider. You chose to become one. And second of all, they were dying. They knew they could not care for me and so they had no choice but to entrust me in your care.”_

“Why were they dying? What kind of monster could do that to them?”

The memory of the horrible wounds, caked with dried blood and black residue, sent an involuntary shiver through Mirayah. The Dragonet, by comparison, seemed extraordinarily un-bothered by it. She was still cradled comfortably in Mirayah’s arms, content to be carried.

 _“I do not know,”_ she replied with a little shrug. _“Just because I have some innate knowledge doesn’t mean I have all the answers.”_

“Well that’s about as useful as shit-flavored candy,” the girl scoffed. But the soft tone of her voice took the sting out of the words. Though she had tried, she found that she couldn’t get mad at this little creature. She had known the Dragonet only a few hours, and yet the Bond made it so that she loved the thing like it was her own flesh and blood.

A sudden wash of cold rain pelted her back an instant later, sending a shiver through her bones. The storm had been winding down for the past few minutes, but every once in a while, it kicked up a little more. Mirayah paused here and set the Dragonet down in the grass, taking advantage of the rain to comb her ragged hair out with her fingers and then tie it back with a strip of her tunic’s hem. This natural shower made her feel clean: cleaner than she’d been in ages. She wished it would never end.

But end it did, in the dim glimmer of pre-dawn. Mirayah shook the water from her limbs, took another look around to make sure she was still headed in the right direction, and then asked the Dragonet if she’d still like to be carried. The hatchling said no, and instead took off in a different direction to hunt field mice. A ravenous hunger lay coiled in the hatchling’s belly, nibbling at her insides and driving her to find meat. Mirayah smiled fondly and continued towards the highway, knowing the Dragonet would keep up.

The pair waded through the sea of grass for another hour and a half, moving in companionable silence. The early-morning quiet was too perfect to disturb with words. Mirayah took deep, appreciative breaths of the dew-laden air. When the sun once again began to creep past the horizon, Mirayah stole glances at it, proud of the fact that she was seeing another dawn as a free woman.

 _“I prayed that I would never be a slave again, and the world answered,”_ she thought.

...

The pair stopped to rest when they stumbled across a stream. The melt-off from the distant mountains, mixed with the recent rain, had cut a deep furrow into the plains’ sandy soil. It wound between the rolling hills, bending in wide curves that slowed the water down in the corners. The hatchling took off upstream to see if she could find and catch a rabbit, while the girl took her belt knife off and waded into the stream, down into the deep and slow center current. She sank into the water fully-clothed, knowing she needed to clean both her filthy rags and her bloodstained body before she continued. Clouds of dirt drifted away from her to be carried away downstream. She watched it go, her thoughts somewhere else entirely.

The water was shockingly cold when she plunged her head under and began to shake out her hair, running her fingers through it under the surface to de-tangle it. Some knots were too hopeless, and so she cut them away with the belt knife. How long it had been since she’d had a proper haircut, she didn’t know. She didn’t wash her hair every day either, since it tended to fluff and curl uncontrollably afterwards. That was just one of the practical troubles of being half Dunían, half Sevharan. Not even to mention the problems other people gave her. ‘Half-breed’, they called her.

She dipped her head back under and rubbed her eyes in the cold mountain water as if to freeze these contentious thoughts out.

After she’d scrubbed all of her clothes she pulled them off under the water, feeling exposed. In her mind she knew that there was no one around for miles and miles. But her instincts rebelled against the nakedness, the lack of shelter, the absence of visual boundaries or cover. These plains were too wide-open. It gave her shivers, this feeling that she was being watched. And she couldn’t help but think of the Dragonet’s parents with their ravaged hides, and the gruesome wounds that had taken their lives. What if it came back? Where would she hide?

She would have given anything to see a tree. 

She kept her body under the surface with only her head peeking out as she finished washing herself. Then she laid the clothes over the grass to dry in the hot sun, and remained in the water.

Once she’d been sitting still for a while, the stream once again smoothed out into a glassy mirror around her. She gazed down at her own reflection with curiosity and wonder. She hadn't realized how much her Bond with the hatchling had physically changed her, for the face that stared back at her was unfamiliar.

She still had the same swarthy, deeply tanned skin, the same jet-black hair, the same angular features and the same incongruous grey eyes as before. But her ears had narrowed now, tapering to points at the ends. She could flick them back and forth a little, and with them she was able to pick up the faintest of sounds. Something about the shape of her face, too, had altered, though how exactly she couldn’t say exactly. She seemed sharper, more alien, more bizarre even than before. She stuck out, though whether in a good way or a bad way remained to be seen. The accumulated scarring on her wrists, the horizontal slash-mark on her right cheek, and the scars that crisscrossed her back were now faded, though they still appeared as thin dark lines. This particular change gave her a deep sense of relief, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The marks of her shame, the scars of her bondage, had been all but erased from her body. She was one step closer to the clean slate in life that she’d been looking for.

But the most dramatic feature she found was the tattoo which was surfacing on her chest. The place where she had felt as if she had been branded, and which was still sore to the touch, was beginning to flush silver. It shimmered in patches and thin lines, solidifying with each hour. It detailed the shape of a stylized Dragon with its eyes situated just above the hollow of her collarbone, its wings spread wide over her broad chest and shoulders, and the slender body plunging down between her small breasts toward her navel. The outlining of it was complete, and the shining silver pigment was slowly filling it in. 

_“It is called a DragonMark. In the days of the DragonRider Order it was a duty, honor, and burden to carry. And now it is yours.”_

Mirayah looked up when the hatchling interrupted her thoughts. The Dragonet appeared from behind the screen of grass with two mice and a rabbit clutched in her jaws. The rabbit was almost as long as she was, and she glowed with pride as she dragged her prize along.

“Well I certainly look… different now.”

_“I like it. You are beautiful.”_

“I wouldn’t go _that_ far,” Mirayah scoffed, rising from the water and reaching for her clothes. “But yes, I… I think I like it too.”

She dressed, then took her knife with her in search of firewood. There wasn’t much, but along the stream bank there were a few thickets of underbrush. She cut dead branches from these and carried them back, supplementing them with clumps of dry grass. The Dragonet lit the campfire with a little burp of blue flame. When the blaze was hot enough, Mirayah cut and skinned the haunches, legs, and breasts from the rabbit. She laid the meat on a flat piece of shale and then cooked it in the flames, turning the pieces over and over with the tip of her knife. Meanwhile, the hatchling gobbled up her mice and all the trimmings from the rabbit, all the way down to the guts, ligaments, and skin. She was busy crunching on the bones when Mirayah pulled her own meal from the fire. 

Once it had cooled, she made short work of the rabbit and then gave the bones to the hatchling, watching as the little creature attacked them with ravenous enthusiasm. Evidently, newborn Dragons had food first and foremost on their minds. The hatchling had a lot of growing to do before she could match her parents in size, and it would take a lot of meat to get her to that point.

Mirayah wondered how long it would be before the Dragon could carry her into the sky.

For long minutes afterward, the girl sat with the hatchling in her lap, staring at the dying embers of their fire. Now the sun had broken free of the horizon and the day was growing bright and clear. Once the hatchling had dropped off to sleep with her belly full, Mirayah set to the mental task of naming the Dragon. After all, she couldn’t keep calling her “little one” for the rest of their lives. The girl shuffled through all the names she’d heard in her life, skipping over the Dunían ones and going straight to the ones from her homeland on the island Sevhara. She’d always thought Sevharan names were so much more beautiful and eloquent than Dunían ones. She shunned the names of her family members, whose memories filled her with too much pain to consider. She didn’t need a daily reminder of them to haunt her. Her former friends, too, she glossed over. All of them had left her, betrayed her, abandoned her in some way over the years. Slavery tended to do that to people. Mirayah’s friends had come and gone. She couldn't do the Dragonet the disservice of naming her after someone she remembered as disloyal.

She was struggling now to think of the right name. How could she summarize in a single word, a mere collection of sounds, the immense love she felt for this little creature that was inextricably bound to her? How could she express in a few syllables the power and purity of that Bond?

In desperation she turned to her mother tongue, the dialect spoken only in the distant island nation of Sevhara. Words and phrases popped into her head one by one and she translated them, trying to find one of sufficient meaning and depth. She and the Dragonet would have to use this name for the rest of their lives, and so she wanted it to mean something.

After what felt like hours of deliberation, it seemed like she had rifled through her entire memory. She had turned the whole Sevharan language over in her head, and nothing seemed to fit. With a groan she lay back in the grass, staring up at the blue vault of the sky. Her skin feverishly sensed every detail of her coarse clothing and the itchy blades of grass beneath her. It took her awhile to get comfortable, although once she did, she felt sleep stealing over her limbs with alarming rapidity.

She dozed on and off for a while, letting the soft light of morning play over her flesh in warm swathes. In the dim realm between waking and sleeping, the natural noises around her morphed into a lullaby: a shade of her childhood welling up from where it had long been buried. She remembered looking up at her parents from her cot, half-asleep. Her younger brother, an infant then, was already snoring in his crib across the room. 

Her mother had been tall, slender, and dark like a tree nymph, her long hair woven in many tiny delicate braids. Her father had been nearly the opposite, pale and luminous in the cool nighttime shadows that filtered in through the windows of their clay-walled house. With the wiry leanness and broad shoulders of a sailor, and grey eyes and blonde hair of a Dunían, he had always stood out as different here in this land where skin and eyes were deep and dark. Her father filled a person’s vision, occupying every room he entered. He had leaned against the wall and watched fondly while her mother sat on the edge of the cot and sang softly. Mirayah’s eyes had roved back and forth between them, examining their faces in detail, with warmth and contentment.

The dream ended when her mother finished the lullaby and leaned down to kiss her goodnight. Her father did the same, and then just before the memory ended she woke up again. She was no longer a child, and rather than laying in a warm cot under a roof, she was laying in the midst of a bed of grass with a cold fire at her feet and nothing but the endless sky above her. Her eyes stung for a moment, but she resolutely blinked it away. She hadn’t cried once since that night seven years ago, and she wasn’t about to start now.

 _“That was a beautiful memory,”_ the hatchling commented, her glimmering silver eyes regarding Mirayah with sympathy. _“What was the lullaby about?”_

The girl let out a slow, long breath and murmured-

“It was about a pair of soulmates, destined to be apart for the rest of their lives. My mother sang that song to my brother and me every night before we slept, like… a sort of prayer. It meant a lot to my parents.”

_“Do you still sing it?”_

“...Every once in awhile.”

_“What was that word that she kept repeating, in the chorus of the song?”_

“It doesn’t exactly translate to Dunían,” Mirayah explained. “Limok ‘means… I suppose you could describe it as ‘soul of my soul’. A person cut of the same material as you, sharing the fiber of a being. The person heaven made you to be with. It’s the strongest word for a loved one that we have.”

_“That’s a lovely word.”_

“...Would you like that as a name?”

_“It is a fitting and noble one.”_

With a smile Mirayah sat up and affectionately pressed her lips to the top of the Dragonet’s head.

“Limok it is, then.”

...

Limok and Mirayah walked all that day, slept rough that night, traveled again the next day, and finally bedded down for their fourth night on the plains. Mirayah was enjoying the trip despite herself. Once the residual pain of her Bond with Limok faded, she discovered a new vigor in her limbs like she had never felt before. Altogether there was something stronger, faster, and sharper about her now. Her endurance stretched on and on, seemingly endless. She could separate scents on the wind with preciseness, hear the distant calls of quail and the rustling of field mice, feel each tiny tooth on the edge of a blade of grass, and see exquisite detail from leagues away. The world had been painted in a new light for her, and it was intoxicatingly beautiful.

After they had caught, cooked and eaten their dinner, the pair settled down in a bed of grass for sleep yet again. Mirayah’s nights had been restless so far. She kept waking and then drifting off again at all hours. Her body was tuned to a high, anxious pitch. Sometimes she felt like she could smell danger, or hear the calamity coming on the wind. But each hour passed as peacefully as the last, and the lack of proper sleep was catching up with her. Though she had intended to stay up and keep watch, her eyes fell closed. She drifted off with her head pillowed on her arm and Limok stretched out on her chest.

_In Mirayah’s mind it started out as a regular dream._

_It was the usual strange, surreal sort of thing that the subconscious mind makes up to fill the time, and then doesn’t remember the next morning. But soon it solidified, and Mirayah felt like she was burning in her sleep. In reality she had just rolled too close to the coals of the fire, but in her dream it was the sun. The sun waxed closer and closer every day, until all of the grasses of the plains burned up and the ground cracked. She was standing in the middle of the wasteland with Limok at her side. But the Dragonet, by contrast, was shivering with cold, gazing around with wild eyes as if she was seeing something completely different from her Rider. Mirayah picked the hatchling up and held her close to herself, to share some of her warmth. The touch of her scales was icy, but it was a nice kind of icy for Mirayah, who had been scorched and burned. Limok, in her turn, felt warmer by the second._

_When both were comfortable again, the grass of the Plains began to re-grow from the dry, cracked ground. Mirayah bent down to look, and saw a host of tiny green shoots issuing up from the cracks. The sound of water filled their ears again, and looking to her left the girl spotted a flood of water barreling her way. She and Limok leapt aside, and the water took its place back in the stream bed. The dream was happening as if time was sped up, and after what felt like seconds, the sun had set on the freshly clad hills._

_But as the sunlight faded from the western horizon, darkness began to creep over the opposite skyline. Normally Mirayah looked forward to the twilight hours, but as the two of them turned to look, she realized that this wasn’t the cool darkness of night that was bearing down upon them. This was different. It came as a storm of sickly shadow whose gases seethed with whispers too foul and foreign to distinguish. Every instinct in Mirayah’s body screamed at her to flee, and yet her limbs were locked in place. A bestial howl froze her blood in her veins as the rolling clouds bore down on her. The sound was somehow akin to a hunting cry and a scream, yet the reverberations seemed to echo back on themselves; nothing, multiplying onto nothing, multiplying onto nothing-_

Mirayah was jerked from her nightmare and into reality as Limok woke up in a fright. They both sat up from where they’d been curled on the ground and looked at one another in alarm.

_“I had this horrible nightmare-”_

"And you were in it-”

_"And I was so cold-”_

"And I was so hot-”

_"And there was this awful nothing-storm-”_

"And that hunting cry!"

_"And it was-”_

"-Wait!” Mirayah cried in confusion, throwing up her arms to halt both of their babbling. “Listen.”

The night was silent around them but for the quiet buzz of insects, and the breeze’s occasional murmur. Grasses rasped around them with each gust of wind. And yet, Mirayah’s ears were ringing and her skin pricked with goosebumps.

"I don't think we should stay here,” Mirayah told Limok, squinting out into the night. The fire was nothing but a few glowing coals now, so she fed it another ripped-up wad of grass. The darkness beyond the ring of firelight seemed thicker now than before, more menacing. Somehow Mirayah knew the dream wasn't what woke her. Something else, something tangible and real, had disturbed their sleep. She just couldn't put her finger on what it was...

Until another howl pierced the stillness.

Mirayah’s heart skipped a beat, and every hair on the back of her neck stood straight up. Limok whimpered with fear and for a moment they were paralyzed, just as they had been in the dream. That awful scream had been real, and that meant there was something making it.

"…Run,” Mirayah croaked. Limok didn’t seem to hear, her eyes were so wide, her body so low to the ground. She crouched, trembling, by Mirayah’s feet, until the girl barked- 

"Run, dammit!" 

Galvanized into action, the Dragonet streaked away north, the opposite direction from whence the eerie cries had come. But she stopped a few hundred feet off when she realized her Rider wasn't following.

 _"What are you doing?"_ Limok cried. Mirayah knelt by the fire without answering, but the hatchling could read Mirayah’s thoughts and see what she planned to do.

 _“Like hell I will let you catch up later!”_ snarled the Dragon, and before Mirayah could utter a word of protest, Limok was at her side helping re-stoke the fire. Mirayah knew she couldn't dislodge the Dragon now if she tried, and so she just had to get the both of them out of here. With Limok’s help the fire was burning bright in the space of thirty seconds.

The blood-chilling hunting cry repeated, but this time is was shorter and softer. It was also closer, as were the numerous answers it received. Mirayah’s fingers trembled as she worked to pull a wad of grass and dirt, and light it. She hurled it off in the general direction of the hunting cries with all her considerable strength, before it could burn her hand. The dry swathes of grass lit immediately, springing up in bright tongues of flame. Mirayah saw a few indistinct shapes dodge out of the way, as large and lithe as mountain cats. She was turning to make another projectile when Limok whimpered,

_"Mirayah- look."_

She whipped around just in time to see a mass of fog wash over the wildfire, smothering it in an instant. It was that same foul darkness from their dream, only this time there were shapes loping through the shadow. Quickly, before her limbs froze with fear, Mirayah snatched up her knife and turned away, dragging one of the charred sticks out of the fire with her to use as a torch.

"Run! Run as fast as you can and don’t look back!” she shouted. Limok shot off like an arrow from a bow with the Rider close at her heels, the torch leaving a ghostly trail of sparks behind them. Another screaming cry rose from the pursuers, and the chase was on. 

Mirayah and Limok tore through the grasses faster than the mortal eye could follow, little more than a dimly lit blur. Their breath was ragged in their chests from fear, and in those moments, they knew the terror of hunted animals. The cries behind them would fade, then intensify, then fade again as the creatures surged forward and fell behind in turns. The Rider kept an eye on Limok at all times, watching to make sure she didn’t fall and get left behind.

 _“Please, if I have to die fighting every single one of them at once, let her be saved.”_ Mirayah prayed silently, though to what God, she had no idea.

...

There was endurance in Mirayah’s body she never even knew she had. But she realized as she stumbled once again that the two of them couldn’t flee forever. The things, whatever they were, could run like the wind and they never seemed to tire. Mirayah’s chest heaved, her legs ached, her head hurt and sweat was dripping in her eyes despite the cool night. Limok was in even worse condition. For Mirayah it was like the slave-catchers all over again, but worse this time, for now they didn’t even know what they were running from. There was no cover to be had.

They’d been sprinting headlong for more leagues than Mirayah could count. She prayed she’d see the highway soon. The highway meant there was a village somewhere nearby, and a village meant help. The village must come up soon! This was the middle of nowhere, the lights should be visible for miles around!

The cries behind them had been gaining for several minutes now. In the next moment Mirayah’s mind registered that the howls had suddenly stopped. But they didn’t dare slow down. It was only a few seconds more before she and Limok saw a blurry smudge of light above, and they knew why the pursuers had given up. They’d finally found it: civilization!

The second Mirayah had the thought, a weight barreled into her from behind. Teeth dug into her left arm before she could do anything; her flesh burned and froze at the same time, and the agony was blinding. She thought she must have screamed, because she tasted blood in the back of her throat. She thrashed on the ground to dislodge it, barely able to make out what ‘it’ was through the spots that danced before her eyes. Limok tried to claw its flank, and it screamed at her touch, wheeling to face her. The Dragonet reeled away in time to avoid a fatal injury, but she squealed as the creature ripped a long scratch on her tail. 

The distraction was enough to free Mirayah. The girl scrambled to her feet, shoving Limok behind her in the same motion. Blood ran down her arm and dribbled from her fingers, but the pain seemed dull compared to the terror that froze her nerves the moment she laid eyes on the attacker.

The creature was like nothing she’d ever seen before, and there was no doubt in her mind that this thing was not meant to exist in this world. Every fiber of her being reeled away from it in automatic loathing. The unholy thing was roughly the size of a mountain lion, with all the same lithe strength. The head was heavy, square, and full of jagged teeth. Mirayah’s blood was sizzling like acid where it came in contact with those fangs. It had no skin to speak of, only a shadowy mass that somehow took the shape of legs and claws. There was no form or feature on it- just black, black so deep and so dark it seemed to be an absence of color, rather than an excess of it. The creature sucked in all of the light around it and absorbed it until it became a spot of nothing, something that shouldn’t be there at all. It reminded Mirayah of the cloud she’d seen in their dream, but possessed of a semi-physical form.

But its eyes! Oh, its _eyes_! Mirayah was transfixed by them against her will, her mind stuck in them like a fly in resin. If anything could glow with emptiness, those eyes did. Her head hurt just looking at them, and being near the creature was enough to freeze every drop of blood in her veins. There was a screeching noise buzzing in her ears, so high it hung on the edge of hearing and yet so low that she felt the fearful vibrations in her chest. A second creature joined the first, then a third, and Mirayah saw more shapes coming through the tall grass. The things looked like they were going to attack again, and she knew she wouldn’t make it if they did.

_“Shit! What do I do? We’re gonna die, oh shit, we’re gonna die, we’re gonna…”_

Without warning, a square of light was thrown down on the two of them. The creature and its brothers were gone as soon as they’d appeared, and for a moment Mirayah’s delirious mind was convinced that some spirit from heaven had descended to save them. But then she heard voices- human voices. She turned towards them, blinking hard against the darkness that was encroaching on her vision. Distantly, as if from the end of a long tunnel, she heard Limok cry-

_“Mirayah! Your arm!”_

The Rider took one step towards the light, and her legs failed. She hit the ground in a fainted heap, numb. There was something wrong with her arm… She couldn’t feel it. She could barely feel anything. What had the creature done? It had sunk its teeth into her, hadn’t it? But this felt too hot, too cold, too poisonous, too wrong to be a simple flesh wound. There was something wrong…

The last thing she heard was a piteous wail from Limok, and then she knew no more.


	3. A price in blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirayah and Limok learn the meaning of collateral damage.

In a dimly-lit attic, in a bed against the far wall by a window, Mirayah lay tucked beneath crisp white sheets. Someone had sponged her clean and brushed her hair out over the pillow, arranging her so picturesquely she looked like death. The nightgown she wore was a size too big for her. The stillness in the room was nearly perfect, except for the motes of dust floating through the shafts of morning light. Limok was curled up in the bed too, with her head laid over her Rider’s heart as if to make sure it was still beating. The girl’s arm, splinted and bandaged, was pinned to her side with a set of chords tied loosely around the bed to keep her from tossing and turning in her sleep. An unhealthy pallor had draped itself over her in the night, turning her lips grey and sapping the color from her cheeks. 

Yet when the sun reached its zenith and finally began to shine in the little circular window, Mirayah felt it in her sleep and turned her head towards it. She let out a fitful, pained sigh. Limok’s head pricked up and the gleaming silver eyes studied the girl, watching for signs of life and awareness. A quick glance into Mirayah’s mind revealed that she wasn’t awake just yet, but she was getting there. Gently, so not to disturb her, the Dragonet slunk out of the bed and skittered out the cracked-open door to fetch someone.

The hatchling returned in a minute or two with another person in tow, an elderly woman. She had hair of a similar texture to Mirayah’s, though she was Dunían through and through. The hair’s color was ginger with silver streaked through it, and it seemed to float airily around her as she moved. Her face was wrinkled and lined like a crumpled-up piece of parchment. Jutting out from those folds was a rather large, aquiline nose. From her robes hung an assortment of little clacking bones tied with ribbons, bundles of dried-up herbs, and parcels full of the same. She smelled like the spices she carried, along with the heady scent of smoke and something else metallic. These were the tell-tale markers of a hedge-witch; a mortal with some limited magical power, common to country villages. These individuals were healers and menders as well as spiritual guardians, but their power was minimal and useless for anything else. Rumor and legend said that they must have had an ancestor who had been blessed by a Dragon or a DragonRider, which gave them a weak link to Dragon magic.

This hedge-witch, though she was obviously quite old, held herself tall. She was a big woman, broad in the shoulders with an energetic step and an innately friendly smile. She glanced down at Limok and asked,

“Well dearie, ye think she’s gonna wake up soon?”

Limok nodded her little head and leapt up into the bed with Mirayah again, resuming her former place. The hedge-witch took the chair by the bedside with a soft groan and a comment about her joints, then sat to wait. There was no other furniture in the sparse attic, except the bedside table which was missing all of its drawers. Earlier in the night there had been a bowl of cool water there along with a rag to cool Mirayah’s feverish skin, but now there was no need. It was just a waiting game.

Mirayah was doing her best not to disappoint. First she became aware of the musty air, passing over her tongue through slightly parted lips. Her pounding head made itself known to her shortly afterward, along with the deep ache that spread from her mangled arm to the rest of her body. The pleasant warmth of the sunlight, moving over her face inch by inch, helped offset that discomfort. Limok intervened at that point, entering her thoughts with a few words of clarification.

_“Be still, Mirayah. We are safe.”_

Without saying it aloud or opening her eyes- for she sensed there was someone else in the room- she asked,

_“Where the hell are we?”_

_“The attic of an inn. We just happened to stumble across the Stopover you were originally headed for, ironically enough. The innkeeper, his wife, and the local hedge-witch run it. They found us just after the attack and took care of you. Don’t worry, I’m positive that we can trust these people. I wouldn’t let them get near you until they’d proved they meant no harm, and they’ve been nothing but helpful since.”_

Mirayah let out a sigh of relief and opened her eyes at last, just narrowly. If Limok had deemed them trustworthy, so did Mirayah. The hedge witch smiled and made a gentle shushing noise.

“Yer okay, dearie. De ye know where ye are?”

Mirayah glanced at the elder and nodded, then hissed and grimaced when she realized her mistake. The motion didn’t help her migraine any. She had the prudence to leave her left arm where it was, but she lifted her right hand (accidentally snapping the cords that she hadn’t noticed were there) and rubbed her eyes tiredly, pinching the bridge of her nose to suppress her headache. The hedge-witch seemed unsurprised at the unintentional display of strength, as if she had seen it before and expected to see it again. She simply smiled a little wider and said-

“Ye gave us a scare. Thought ye weren't gonna make it. Have ye had anything’ ter eat since yesterday?”

Mirayah closed her eyes and sank back into the pillow, still holding her palm to her forehead.

“No, ma’am.”

The hedge-witch chuckled. “Ma’am’ is it, now? Ye thought I was a fearsome fiend earlier, ye did!”

Mirayah frowned.

“I… I don't remember that. I'm sorry if I said anything, I was not myself.”

“Oh, I know ye weren't, dearie. All’s forgiven. Though ye were a right challenge, ye were! It took the combined strength of all three of us to keep ye on the kitchen table, ye struggled so! Whatever the hell that poison was, I managed to pull it outta ye in the nick o’ time. Though it tired me so, I shan’t be able to do so much as mend a pot for the next week. Like I said- gave us a scare.”

Mirayah finally removed her hand and turned to look at the woman, wondering-

“Who are you?”

“Ye can call me Phyllis. In case ye ain’t guessed, I’m the village hedge-witch,” she waved a hand at her clothes and cackled. “Yer in the attic of the inn in a farmin’ town called Galeshire. We’re a Stopover, so no need ta worry about a thing. We’ve been doin’ this sorta thing for a long time. What’s yer name, dearie?”

“I’m Mirayah,” the girl replied, extending a hand to shake. “This is Limok.”

Phyllis raised an eyebrow as she returned the Rider’s firm grip. “Limok, hm? Like the song?”

Mirayah blushed and nodded, finding that her headache was receding the longer she was awake.

“Um, yes, I uh…”

The witch chuckled indulgently.

“No need to explain, m’dear. Her name is lovely- as is yours. Never heard that particular name before, actually, and we’ve been runnin’ this Stopover fer years.”

Mirayah cracked the fraction of a smile. “Funny enough I should happen upon you now. Before I got sidetracked, this was probably next destination on the Route.” 

“Yer a runaway, then?” Phyllis prompted.

“Yeah,” she admitted, “though… I never imagined any of this would happen when I made the decision to run. It’s been a strange couple of days.”

The hedge-witch clapping her hands together eagerly.

“Oh, I’ve just got ta fetch Ulysses and Diantha for this! I’ll get ye some food and drink, dearie, and then ye can tell us yer story. Diantha loves stories- the life of an innkeeper’s wife ain’t exactly excitin’, ye know.”

Before Mirayah could get a word in edgewise the witch leapt upright and rushed from the room, leaving a cloud of spiced, musty air in her wake.

After the clatter of her bone-embroidered robes had receded down a creaky ladder, Mirayah judged that she and Limok were finally alone. With a groan she sat the rest of the way up, brushing the broken cords off and swinging her legs over the side. Her bare feet cringed as she set them down on the cold wooden floor. Her whole body felt feverish. She swept her mane of hair out of her face and then rubbed her shoulder with her right hand, trying to chafe some life into her limb. It felt cold down to the bone, from her shoulder socket to the tips of her fingers.

“Limok…” she murmured, her voice hoarse, “What happened?”

_“You will find out soon enough. Phyllis talks about a million miles a minute.”_

Mirayah rolled her eyes. “Lovely.”

_“Do not be unkind. They mean well.”_

“We’ll see.”

Just then Mirayah heard with her sharp ears the approach of footsteps- three sets, one she identified as Phyllis, one she thought was light enough to be female, and one heavier one that must be male. She drew the sheet up from the mattress and wound it around her shoulders, then a moment later the door opened again. In came Phyllis, then a shorter woman with a motherly sort of figure in a blue dress and apron, and then a man of average height and build, with a little belly and a thick head of silver-blonde hair. Mirayah surmised this was the innkeeper and his wife. They both looked to be around fifty-five. They appeared a great deal more composed than their unkempt companion.

“Mirayah,” Phyllis said, “This is Ulysses and his wife Diantha. They keep the inn here, and the three of us run the Stopover. Ulysses, Diantha, this is Mirayah. The little one’s name is Limok.”  
The two newcomers smiled broadly at Mirayah. Ulysses had brought two wooden folding-chairs from the anteroom outside the attic door, which he set about screwing together. While he took care of this, Diantha approached and sat next to Mirayah on the edge of the bed.

“How are ye feeling, love?” The woman asked, taking Mirayah’s left arm and unwinding the sling and bandages. The Rider sighed.

“Very tired, but alive, thanks to you. May I ask what time it is?”

“It’s about two in the afternoon. Ye picked a good time ta wake up, it’s nearly empty downstairs.”

“And… what time did I get here?”

“Near midnight two days ago, m’dear.”

Phyllis chimed in at this point, adding in- “’Twas a right foggy night too, good thing ye yelled or we wouldn’a found ye ‘til mornin’! How’d ye even get here in the first place? T’ain’t nothin ‘round here for miles, and ye came from the opposite side as the road.”

“It’s… it’s a long story,” Mirayah sighed while Diantha examined her arm with exceedingly gentle fingers. The girl avoided looking at the wound.

“If ye don’t mind, we’d love ta hear it. We love learnin’ about the people who come through here” said Ulysses, who had just finished putting the chairs together. “We can tell ye what happened afterwards too, and put two and two together. How’zat sound?”

Mirayah nodded, absentmindedly gathering Limok into her lap and stroking her. Diantha was re-wrapping her arm now, muttering under her breath at how remarkably fast it was healing. When all three of her companions had taken their places across from her, Mirayah re-draped the sheets around her shoulder and brushed her hair out of her face again. She started into her story haltingly, choosing as few words as she could manage. She didn’t like to speak of these things, but at Limok’s urging, she was being forthcoming. These people had saved her life, after all, and if it was a story they asked for in return, it was a story she must give them.

“I, um… I was born to a tribe on Sevhara, to a Sevharan mother and a Dunían father. I… I would give names and places and dates, but I don’t always remember things about those times clearly. And for the sake of others’ safety it’s probably best that I keep certain details anonymous- you understand.”

Phyllis nodded and waved a hand dismissively as if it were a given.

“O’ course dearie, o’course. Everyone always keeps certain things secret, we know the nature o’ things.”

Limok gave Mirayah a mental nudge, similar to being elbowed under the table. At the Dragonet’s urging, Mirayah flashed her listeners a thin smile of thanks and then continued.

“Well, um, my tribe’s home was raided by slavers when I was thirteen… both of my parents were killed and I haven’t seen my younger brother since we were sold. I’m… sorry if it sounds grim… but you must be used to such stories by now.”

As always when she had to talk or think about these things, her hands fell to rubbing her wrists absentmindedly, chafing at the mottled scars that encircled them. Diantha’s eyes flicked down at them, and then back up.

“Don’t go on unless ye want to, love.”

“No, I’ll keep going,” she insisted at Limok’s urging. “Just give me a moment to gather my thoughts.”

Over the following minutes she glossed over her history as a slave: being sold from farm to farm for unruly behavior, never settling down under one master, never making too many attachments with the knowledge that she’d just as soon be sold off again, seething with the irrepressible need to run. Then she came to her decision to escape: the weeks of preparation, the sneaking, the running, the dark nights and fearful days, the slavers that finally caught up and ran her off the highway.

As she told her story she couldn’t help but pause sometimes and frown as she went back in her head and re-arranged the timeline, trying to get the events straight in her head. She went from the day she’d Bonded with Limok and slowly began to recount the hours, the days spent lost in the wilderness. When she told of her encounter with the shadow-demons her listeners leaned in with bated breath. She could feel her own heart race just from thinking of it. Finally, she reached the moment when the demons caught up to her. Her voice trailed off as she remembered the feeling of the weight barreling into her, the horrid aura of the thing, the searing teeth in her flesh. She shivered.

“I don’t remember much after that,” she finished. “The creatures disappeared when they heard someone coming, presumably it was you. I think I passed out. This must be where you come in, Mr. And Mrs. Cleveland.”

The innkeeper’s wife waved a hand.

“Ye can just call us Diantha and Ulysses, love. And as fer two nights ago-”

Phyllis nodded eagerly, cutting Diantha off. Mirayah was just glad not to be the center of attention anymore. It was someone else’s turn.

“Aye, dearie, Diantha heard ye yell and woke Ulysses ta come see what was goin’ on. When the two o’ them got ye inside ye were pale as a ghost an’ twitchin’ something terrible. They fetched me first thing.”

“We knew it was serious because the moment she laid eyes on you, she was dead silent,” interjected Diantha, crossing her arms and shooting the hedge-witch a sardonic look. The older woman just laughed.

“I’m allowed ta get serious sometimes!” she exclaimed. “Ye were right scary, ye were. Close ta death I reckon, not ta mention how shockin’ it was to see a lil’ babby Dragon hidin’ under the kitchen table!” With this she smiled and waved to Limok where she was situated in Mirayah’s lap, and then continued. “Silly child would’n let any of us near ye, kept snappin’ and bitin’, until we brought out the bandages and such. Then she seemed to realize we was tryin’ ta help, and she was just a sweetheart after that. Ye started strugglin’ and thrashin’ while we was tryin’ ta bandage yer arm, shouting curses and things. The bleedin’ wouldn’t stop. When ye opened yer eyes they was coal black through and through, no whites, no irises or nothin’. Just black, like ye was possessed or somethin’ horrible. Terrible kinds o’ magic was in ye, horrid stuff the likes of which I never seen in my entire life.”

“Phyllis got it out, though,” Ulysses chimed in. “She drew it up outta yer wound, like suckin’ snake venom. This nasty black ooze dribbled out, all mixed in with yer blood. She bottled it up in a vial and, when it started tryin’ ta eat its way out the glass, she threw it out the back door. Ye calmed down after that, fell asleep and stayed that way. Can’t say ye looked good, but anythin’ was better than that awful black drivel. Diantha has a wonderful hand with broken bones, and Phyllis has lovely recipes for poultices, so between the two of ‘em we had ye put back together in no time. We figured ye was a runaway fer, ye know, obvious reasons. Cleaned ye up and brought ye up here where we bring all the others who come to us. Yer right lucky, just earlier today we sent a big family of Sevharans on their way. Up until this mornin’ there was nine people hidin’ in this attic, though now ye got it all to yerself.”

Mirayah looked down at her lap again with her cheeks burning, humbled by what she’d heard.

“I’m sorry to be such trouble. Thank you,” she murmured in a low voice. “You saved my life, and Limok’s. Is… is there any way we can repay your kindness?”

Phyllis stood up from her seat with a fond chuckle, setting her chair aside.

“That’s what they all say. Think nothin’ of it, dearie.”

“Aye,” Diantha echoed, “Yer welcome to hide here until yer healed up, and when we send ye off we’ll make sure ye’ve got some supplies. In fact, it’s our honor to host… Oh Phillie, what was the term again?”

“A DragonRider, love.”

“A DragonRider! Lordy, how long’s it been since there’s been a DragonRider?”

Phyllis was just re-knotting some of the little ribbons on her robes, in preparation to leave. She replied,

“Oh, it’s been at least a millennium, if not more, since anyone’s heard of a DragonRider. I can’t say fer certain if there might be one out there hidin, but you’d be the first to walk around freely fer a long time.”

Mirayah looked up attentively, fixing the hedge-witch under a piercing gaze. “Do you know where would be a good place to start looking for others? I… I haven’t the first clue what a Rider is supposed to do. It’s vital that if there are other Riders out there, or even ruins, that I find them.”

Phyllis paused by the door, screwing her wrinkled lips to the side and looking at the ceiling pensively. She answered,

“Well dearie, nothin’s fer certain, but the West mountains is where most Wild Dragons like Limok’s parents are hidin’ nowadays. Somewhere in there is the ruins of an old DragonRider Palace, and if it were me I’d start searchin’ there.”

“How do I get there?” The girl prompted, sitting up a little straighter. Diantha chuckled and stood too as the witch exited the attic.

“That’s a conversation for another day, love. I know yer hungry and thirsty, and rest is what ye need right now.”

Mirayah struggled to her feet in agitation, dislodging Limok and almost letting the sheet slip from her shoulders.

“No, you don’t understand. Limok and I can’t stay here long or I risk bringing slave-catchers down on this village, and on you. And what about those creatures? If they come back they could kill you all. You’ve been kind to me and I can’t let that happen.”

Ulysses waved a hand. “Rubbish. Yer injured, yer tired. We wouldn’t dream of turnin’ ye out. Yer free to go if ye really want, but we insist ye stay here for a day or two at least. That’s how long Diantha says it’ll take ye to recover, at this rate, ain’t that right, m’dear?”

The inkeeper’s wife nodded. “Aye. Ye’re healin’ real fast, love, so if ye can be patient for a day or two then we can send ye off in good conscience. The best way ye can repay us is lettin’ us care for ye until we feel good about ye leavin’. Can ye do that for us?”

Mirayah hesitated, again drawing her fingers over her wrists. Limok crept to the edge of the bed and rubbed the bony top of her head against her Rider’s thigh.

_“Stay, Mirayah. We owe it to them, and you owe it to yourself. You’ve made it this far. You deserve rest.”_  
The girl sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Fine,” she said aloud, once again sitting on the edge of the bed. “But just for one more day, and then I can’t impose on you any longer

Diantha smiled kindly. “Yer not imposin’, love, but it’s up ta you. Would ye like somethin’ ta eat? Ye must be famished.”

She nodded. “Yes please. And, if it’s not too much trouble, Limok would appreciate something too.”

“What kinds o’ things do Dragons eat?” Ulysses wondered, tilting his head at the hatchling.

Mirayah shrugged. “Mostly meat. If you just have some leftovers, or bones and trimmings and the like, that would do just fine. She eats anything.”

“Comin’ right up, loves. Ye just lay back now and rest awhile. Oh, and try ta keep quiet if ye can- don’t want our patrons thinkin’ there’s someone up here,” Ulysses said with a wink.  
“Thank you so much, both of you,” Mirayah said once more. Diantha winked, bid her goodbye once more, and then left the attic with her husband. As the creaky door swung shut behind them, Mirayah let out a long sigh.

...

When he brought dinner, Ulysses asked Mirayah what things she’d like him to put in her pack. She blushed a little and told him that anything he could spare was fine. But just before he left she remembered something, and said,

“Wait! I nearly forgot! Would… would it be possible to get ahold of a longbow or a quarterstaff?”

“Well I dunno about the longbow, love, but lemme see about that stick,” he replied with a wink. Then he closed the door behind him before she got a chance to thank him.

Reading the turmoil in her thoughts, Limok nudged her hand with her snout and told her,

_“They’re just helping. It’s okay to accept help every once in a while.”_

“I know, little one,” Mirayah replied, “But I just… I dunno.”

_“You feel like a burden.”_

“….Yes.”

_“Well do not. To these people, helping you is second nature. They run a Stopover. This is how they give themselves purpose in the world, and even though it is a risk, it is a risk that they take willingly. There is nothing to feel bad about in that.”_

“Whatever you say, dearest,” the girl sighed.

They spent some time listening to the clamor of the tavern below, and watching out the window as night fell. Limok dropped off to sleep first, with Mirayah shortly following.

...

The town of Galeshire, where the Dragon and Rider hid, was a very small one. It rested on top of a massive rise- one of the earliest foothills of the nearby mountains. There was a U-shaped ring of buildings encircling the cobblestone square. One of these was the inn, with the bakery next door, the tannery near to it, and the blacksmith across the way. Other shops occupied the spaces around, with a larger building at the head of the U that served as both a town hall and a schoolhouse. A huge water well occupied the center of the square. Houses clung to the sides of the rise, the homes of the people who worked by the square. Further downhill were more residences with their gardens and smaller individual wells. Spreading from the foot of that rise was more than a dozen farms, with a dusty road winding between them. That dusty road was streaked with the double-tracks of carriage and cart wheels, constantly flowing in and out.  
This was the start of one of the many semi-paved highways that spread across the plains and deserts, with the city of Weëba at the center of the web. All these roads began at Weëba and passed through the surrounding towns. These towns got smaller and smaller the further away from the city they were, until the roads tapered to an end. Galeshire was one such example of an end-of-the-road town.

Behind the town, to the east, there was nothing but the plains; a sea of grass frozen in rolling waves of wind-blown, sandy soil. It stretched for miles in every direction, seemingly endless, vast beyond measure. From this direction Mirayah and Limok had come, and from this direction there now came a second flood of darkness; deeper, fouler, and colder than the night itself.  
It came in soft, wispy, billowing tendrils that crept over the town, putting out lamps with gentle breaths. In a matter of minutes the air was heavy with it, overflowing with it. The shadow was so deep it was as if the moon had been smothered and Galeshire had been sealed beneath a dome into which no spear of light could penetrate. Right in the center of it there was a figure. It was not visible, exactly, as there was no light to reflect upon its surface. It existed as a sort of epicenter, tangible only through the sixth sense. If one were able to penetrate the gloom and focus upon it, it would take the shape of a person, though man or woman was impossible to tell. It was genderless, barely humanoid to begin with. It had neither walked into the town nor had it materialized- it was simply there one moment, in a place where it had not been before. It had brought this unnatural darkness with it and now it stood, perfectly still and silent, in the center of the square by the well, waiting. 

The strange nothing-fog began to seethe and shiver around it. Eight animalistic creatures formed within the deep cloud, peeling off of the humanoid figure like bark from a tree. They loped on silent feet between the buildings, needing no outside direction in order to know their individual missions. All of them were the same. They were cut from the same cloth, imbued with the same urge, commanded by the same basic, inexorable thought. 

Through walls and doors they passed as if the solid objects weren’t even there. One by one they snuffed out the lives of the unwary villagers who lay asleep in their beds, starting with the ones in the farms below and then working their way up towards the square where their anchor still stood. The end came swiftly and silently to each man, woman, and child they encountered, soaking sheets in blood and the residual black ooze they left around the edges of the wounds. There were only eight of them, and so it was some time before they got close to the top of the rise.

Without warning, there came from below a long, loud, harrowing scream. A child had left her house to use the necessary and, upon returning, had found her siblings snuffed out, dead in pools of their own blood. The scream was rapidly cut off in a strangled gurgle, but not before it drifted through the attic window into Mirayah’s sensitive ears.  
Bitter experience snapped her awake in an instant, and within another fraction of a second she understood what was happening. Fear seared in her gut like acid. She leapt from the bed, shouting aloud.

“Fire! Everybody out, fire!”

She knew there was no fire- the creatures wouldn’t let there be one- but it would get people up and running. She didn’t pause long to check if anyone was following. She and Limok leapt from the top of the ladder to the bottom in one jump, their feet hitting the ground hard. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she ducked through a taproom which she didn’t remember into a kitchen which she vaguely did recall. It was hard for her to see anything at all in the thick, unnatural darkness, but Limok sniffed out a traveling pack where it sat in one corner, leaning against the cabinet. Mirayah followed and felt over it. 

There was clothing, and what felt like a metal-shod quarterstaff. Underneath the clothing was a canvas walking pack with leather straps. She threw one strap over her shoulder and snatched up the staff without bothering to change into the clothes. For a moment she fumbled around for the doorknob, hearing alarmed voices above and around her. But then she paused at the door, listening to those voices and warring with her conscience. Then, with a frustrated growl, she turned and dashed back into the inn.

Room by room she opened the doors, breaking them if they were locked, and making sure they were either empty or that the occupant was awake and moving. She couldn’t really see any of them- even for her enhanced vision, the air was too thick- but her hearing picked up their heartbeats, her nose twitched with their scents. All around her she could hear the creatures’ awful howling. Every moment she remained here chafed against her instincts, where they were already rubbed raw. She wanted to run, but the competing urge compelled her to find her saviors and take them with her. She found Diantha and Ulysses in their bedroom and shook Ulysses, the slower-rousing of the two, awake. She took him by the hand and dragged him to his feet, followed shortly behind by Diantha, the lighter sleeper.

“Come on, let’s go!” she shouted. “They’re here! They’re coming for us, we need to go!”

As they reached the kitchen again the innkeepers shook loose from her and then gave her a shove toward the door.

“Go, take the pack! Run as fast as ye can and don’t go back! We need to get our patrons out!” Ulysses shouted.

“Be safe, Mirayah and Limok!” Diantha added, embracing her quickly.

“No, no no no!” she shouted, taking her hand again. “They’ll kill everyone, you have to come with me, we have to go now! Please, I’ve seen what these things can do, they’ll be here any second!”

The two innkeepers disentangled themselves from her and sank into the surrounding darkness. She cast about wildly for a moment, but they’d disappeared into the whirl of horrid fog around her. It was It was all around her, creeping into her lungs. Limok was scared and cowering, her little chest heaving and her eyes wide as she looked about blindly. She cried,

_“Mirayah, they don’t want our help, we have to go now!”_

The Rider took one wavering step in, and then one towards the door, and then another inside again. But the competing instincts inside her had finished battling. One more hunting cry sealed the deal for her. There were clothes with the pack. She ripped the nightgown over her head and yanked the clothes on in a few seconds, sliding her feet into the boots without bothering to fasten the straps, pulling the cloak over her head rather than unclasping and re-clasping it. Then she turned, scooped up Limok in her good hand, and ran for the door. She dashed out into the plains, her heart pounding. For several hundred feet, she could see nothing. She only managed to navigate her way by her senses of touch and hearing. Then there was a dim light ahead of her, blue and silver in color, which she realized was the gentle dimness of night. She re-doubled her efforts, breaking free of the unnatural dark halo within seconds.  
She didn’t pause or look back until she reached the top of the next rise. As she felt herself mount the crest of the hill she paused. Then she turned to glance behind, and found to her immense surprise that in the minute or two she’d been looking away, the terrible clouds had disappeared. Galeshire looked perfectly normal and quiet beneath the light of the half-moon.

“What in the blazes?” she wondered, mostly to herself.

Then the harsh whispers began to build behind her, and she realized with a sinking feeling that she had been duped. By the time she whirled around, the seething shadow was closing in a kill-circle. Mirayah ducked her head and tried to run faster for the gap, but then she reared to a stop when the gap closed. All around her was a growing, inexorable shadow. She set Limok back down, though the Dragonet shivered and cried in protest. In her good hand, she gripped the quarterstaff tight and brandished it around her.

“Stay back!” she cried, “Whatever the fuck you are!”

Within the indistinct halo of shadow she could see shapes forming, slinking about in rapid circles. Then one shape, clearer than the others, stepped forward. It was the humanoid anchor, that empty shell with no face left, no voice, no corporeal presence. It emerged into Mirayah’s little spot of moonlight… dragging something. She shuffled backwards as it drew near, until she realized what it was carrying. A choked, horrified noise jerked from her throat as the creature dropped the bodies of Ulysses and Diantha in the grass. Their flesh from chin to knee was rent open, the ragged edges of flesh still oozing blood. The remains of the innkeeper’s apron were streaked with gore and some black foul substance. Limok squealed and buried her eyes in her claws at the sight, shivering violently. Mirayah’s limbs felt cold, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the corpses.

The thing advanced on the Dragon and Rider with a slow, purposeful step. Mirayah yelled out another warning, her voice cracking, and when it didn’t stop or even seem to take notice, she swung at it with her staff. To her horror, the fire-hardened wood passed right through the creature as if it wasn’t there. The thing’s attention flitted over to her briefly and, with a motion as fast or faster than Mirayah’s own blinding speed, it planted a hand on her chest and threw her aside like she was a featherweight. Limok squealed and tried to skitter to the side, away from the thing, but she wasn’t fast enough and it was already so close. The creature brought its fist down on her back, flattening her with one blow. Mirayah screamed in tandem with the Dragonet as she felt Limok’s skin writhe in pain at the thing’s horrid touch. Her scales had deflected the worst of the blow, but several of them were cracked and they wouldn’t save her a second time.

Mirayah could feel the killing blow coming- the thing was raising its hand again- when there was a blinding flash of silver light. Limok rolled on her back and burped flame at the creature. It ignited instantly and the flames raced over it as if it was covered with pitch, and with a scream it reeled away. It continued screaming as Dragonfire raced through its body: that terrible, nerve-grinding scream! In an instant the surrounding shades had fallen to writhing and shrieking as if in pain. A second blinding flash followed the first, and then as quickly as they had appeared, the things were gone.

Mirayah was bewildered, but she didn’t stop to question or investigate. She scrambled to her feet, snatched Limok up, turned on her heel, and ran.


	4. In bas-relief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crossing Dunía's vast central plains proves to be more of a challenge than Mirayah anticipated, but she and Limok are ready for anything.

The sunrise was long in coming, but when its light finally graced the sky, Mirayah nearly cried from joy. All around her, for hours, the plains had been silent. They’d reached the highway and it had been empty, which helped assure her that maybe- just maybe- they were safe at last. She came to a stop just as the sun’s light breached the horizon, but without the momentum of forward motion, her legs failed her. She collapsed to her knees in the middle of the dusty road, let Limok slither from her grasp, and proceeded to heave the contents of her stomach out into the dirt. Limok laid her head in the dust by her Rider’s leg, her forked tongue hanging from the side of her mouth. For what seemed like hours they sat still and panted, struggling to fill their lungs with every massive, sobbing breath.

Eventually Mirayah crawled to the side of the road and sat on her backside, gratefully shedding her pack. Her new strength hadn’t failed her yet, but all of that exertion still took a toll. Her whole body was feverishly hot and trembling. Her legs burned terribly and it was a struggle to fold them under her. Limok slunk over to join the girl, resting her head on her right thigh. The hatchling didn’t have a scrap of strength left in her body, after all that running

Mirayah took her arm out of the sling and began to unwrap the bandages, careful not to damage any in case she needed to re-use them. She bit the inside of her cheek and then looked down at the bite-marks on her arm, expecting the worst. But to her surprise, the flesh wound was mostly closed up, and though the arm was still a bit bruised she could feel that the bone was fusing. She wrapped it up again and put it back in the sling, then turned to her pack.

Now that they’d lost their pursuers, she decided now was as good a time as any to inspect the contents of her pack. She paused a moment to re-adjust her clothes. She slid the belt around her waist over the tunic, tucked the leggings into the tops of her boots, fastened the bootstraps, and then dug the scarf out of the pack. She draped it over her head and then wound in loose loops around her neck. Then she properly clasped the cloak and put the hood up over it. This disguised both her unique ears and her DragonMark. She knew they’d have to travel on the road because it was the quickest way to the city, and the city meant safety from the shadow-demons. But the possibility of people was a mixed blessing that could also mean their doom, if they were careless and let themselves be seen for what they really were.

That taken care of, she began to inspect the other things in the bag. It seemed that the innkeepers had thrown away her old rations, which had consisted of a few moldy onions and some rock-hard camp biscuits. They had re-packed her belt knife, but replaced her flint and steel. There was a half a loaf of bread, a supply of flour, some salt, a wax-cloth bundle of dried dates, and some strips of smoked beef all in a pouch. A little saucepan was tucked alongside it, with a single wooden spoon. A long coil of rope sat in the bottom. There was a blanket, which was made of thin material but was quite long and wide. Just like her cloak, it was rubbed with wax on one side for waterproofing. A hard leather tube contained a rudimentary map of Dunía and a compass. Her canteen was full of coffee, which smelled like it hadn’t been sweetened.

She took a few long, deep draughts to revive herself. It tasted like canteen leather, but it was just what she needed. That little kindness, that little token of thoughtfulness from the good people at the inn, was nearly enough to break her down. The thought of them weighed heavy on her scarred heart. She gave her head a shake as if to dislodge the image of their mangled bodies, and turned back to the pack to distract herself.

Unfortunately, there weren’t any more coffee grounds in the pack, but she did find a small canvas pouch of coins. Ten silverpence and twenty coppers- as much travel money as the innkeepers could have spared. Besides that, there wasn’t much else in the pack besides a sewing kit, a comb, some wax soap, and a washcloth all tied up in an extra hair ribbon resting in the bottom. Anything else she needed, she’d have to buy on the way.

Everything but the food went neatly back in the pack. Mirayah gave Limok a few strips of the beef and a good swig of coffee, then she took the half a loaf of bread for herself. They sat and ate in silence, for fear of speaking what was on their troubled minds. When they were done eating Mirayah slid the rolled-up map out of its protective leather tube and spread it out on her lap. It wasn’t detailed, but it showed the locations of all the major cities, roads, rivers, lakes, and mountains. Someone had placed a large red X almost in the center of the West mountains, next to a particularly large peak that had no name. Phyllis the hedge-witch had mentioned that the ruins of the DragonRider Order were hidden deep within those wild mountains. That was presumably her next destination: the DragonRider Palace. She located the road she was on and followed its course, noting the bends and curves. It went northwest (the right direction) for about two-thirds of the way, before curving north toward the city of Weëba. A few miles before it reached the city it suddenly began to curl back and forth in sharp switchbacks as it climbed up the side of the plateau upon which the city was built. Mirayah and Limok decided by unspoken consent that they’d follow it for now, then figure something else out later, before they reached the bend that led to Weëba.

Part of Mirayah wanted to avoid the extra time and miles by cutting past the loops and curves in the road and going cross-country. But the other part reminded her that the road was her protection from the demons, and that it curved the way it did in order to follow water sources. The terrain between them and their destination was dry plains ceding into desert, and so water was crucial.

The girl rolled the map up, putting it back in the tube and capping it with care. The pack had a drawstring on the top, which she tied tight once everything was back in it. The pair heaved themselves to their feet with a few curses, stretching their overworked muscles. Their legs had gone cold and stiff while they’d been resting. Limok wanted to stay with her Rider, but the risk of being seen was too great. The Dragonet went off the road a few hundred yards until the tall grass obscured her small form. Then, with a slow, measured stride, they set off up the road.

...

They walked for hours. The summer sun beat down on them, glancing off Limok’s scales like mirrors. She rolled in the dust to hide them, though she hated to get the grit between the scales where it itched. Rather than stop and rest at any point, they kept going through the hot hours at an easy pace. If they stopped, their muscles would stiffen and increase the soreness tenfold. The only thing to do was continue until nightfall.

The time passed slowly. In every direction, all Mirayah could see was grass. Grass to the left, grass to the right, and a thin ribbon of road ahead. Feeling began to fade, until all that was left to them was the monotonous motion of walking. Left, right, left, right, left, right. Mirayah’s quarterstaff tapped gently on the packed dirt with each stride. The girl emptied her mind to avoid over-thinking or musing, for she knew from bitter experience how harmful it could be to dwell on things. But without anything to think about, her brain started to drift away from her body. Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, Mirayah realized that she was nodding off. She stopped in the center of the road and shook her arms and legs out, trying to get some sensation back. Her arm ached. She realized that she and Limok were beyond exhausted at this point: they were utterly spent. They couldn’t go on like this until they’d recovered.  
They walked for a few more minutes until a rise, slightly higher than the other gentle foothills, came into view. It stood somewhat to the left of the road, and the dusty path wound around it rather than over. The terrain was full of small rolling hills, but this one seemed like it would provide more shelter than various other campsite options. The two waded through the grass, not caring about the clear track they were making in it, and hiked around the hill to the side opposite the road. 

They got lucky, for once, when they reached the leeward side of the hill. There was a thicket of brambles and nettle growing in a dip at the base of the rise, where water collected. It hadn’t rained here in days, however, so the hollow was quite dry. The place was obviously a favorite among travelers, because someone had sliced a path to the center of the thicket. There was a clear space for a camp in the center. The Dragon and Rider forged their way to the clearing, where it was shady, and set up to rest there.

Mirayah wasn’t worried about rain, so rather than try to put up a tent she simply folded the blanket in half on the ground and set her pack down for a pillow. Then, using her belt knife, she cut some dry firewood from the bramble bushes and the tall, dry grass. She piled it in the center of the clearing and had Limok light the tinder. While it burned, she busied herself by making camp-bread out of flour, coffee, and diced dates. The saucepan was her mixing dish while she made the dough. She’d made this kind of bread many times- it only called for water and flour. The stuff tasted awful if there was nothing else to add, but mixing in the fruit and substituting coffee for water would make it better. She used up all the flour and the grapes, making a half-dozen fist-sized biscuits. She cooked two at a time in her pan, turning them carefully with the tip of her knife.

The hard bread still managed to burn on the bottom of the pan, but most of it came out intact. Juggling the hot biscuits in her hands, she slipped all but one into the empty flour bag. The remaining one she ate, breaking off small pieces and blowing on them. Limok tried a bit too, curious to see what they tasted like.

_“They are a bit doughy in the middle,”_ she critiqued as she chewed. Mirayah shrugged as she popped another chunk in her mouth.

“They’re not supposed to be fancy. But they’ll keep for as long as it takes me to eat them. I think I can make them last ten days, if I’m very careful and if you hunt for your own food. You can do that, right?”

_“Of course. I can run faster than any rabbit.”_

“Good. I’ll also buy some more rations along the way.”

_“Where will you get them from?”_

“Well, the map says that this road crosses another not far ahead. At a junction like that, you’d think there must be some sort of outpost. A village, a town, something.”

_“How much money do you have?”_

“Ten silverpence and twenty or so copperpence. Not much.”

_“Then how will we get more?”_

“I dunno. Steal it.”

_“Mirayah!”_

“Only from someone who doesn’t need it!” the girl qualified, shifting in her seat uncomfortably. Apparently Dragons had very strong moral compasses, because Limok seemed horrified that Mirayah would even contemplate such a thing.

_“I do not approve,”_ the Dragonet growled.

“Your disapproval is duly noted.”

_“And ignored.”_

“I know it’s wrong, but this is-”

_“Do you? Do you really? Because you seem quite comfortable with theft.”_

Mirayah sighed. “Limok, I understand that it’s against your nature to steal. I know Riders are supposed to be pillars of morality, and this is hard for you to accept. But this is a matter of survival. Stealing was a part of life for me for many years.”

_“But those days are behind you now!”_

“No, Limok, they’re not. They’ll never be behind me, even now that I’m free. I wish I could afford to do the right thing all the time, but that’s just not a slave’s reality.”

Limok sighed, but fell silent.

...

There were still a few hours left to the day, but the pair were so tired they couldn’t fathom going any further. Mirayah took the first four-hour watch while Limok rested. To keep her mind busy, she practiced with the quarterstaff, going through motions she remembered from all of her time training as a child. Her whole being was focused on the staff, the way it moved in her hands, the way her feet anchored her and shifted her through each move, and the way the weapon struck at the invisible enemy before her. She practiced for the duration of her watch. It had been a long time since she’d held a weapon in her hands, but the sensation of the fire-hardened wood beneath her fingers was so familiar that she picked the moves right back up. It was like her seven years of slavery had faded out of existence, and no time at all had passed since those hazy days she had spent at home on Sevhara. If anything, Mirayah’s enhanced reflexes and strength gave her an even sharper edge than she’d ever had before.

Soon enough she had measured out her time, and it was Limok’s turn. By then the sun was beginning to set. The western horizon was bathed in crimson as Limok woke, stretching like a cat. They traded places- the Dragonet sat near the top of the hill and faced the road, while the girl laid down at the bottom of the hill in the brambles. She wrapped her cloak around herself and folded the blanket over her shoulders, resting her head on the pack. She was asleep in seconds, she was so exhausted, and for once she didn’t have a single night terror. Her brain didn’t have the energy to torture her.

The night passed uneventfully. Limok’s watch ended and she took over again until dawn. They woke Limok when the sun reappeared, and they doused the fire before taking to the road. Their legs were still sore, but once they were warmed up and stretched out it wasn’t so bad. Limok chased down and caught a pheasant, which she made quick work of. The hours marched along in hot monotony.

They kept going an hour or so past dusk, but as the last vestiges of sunlight left the sky Mirayah felt the temperature dropping. There weren’t any convenient camping places, so she just went off the road a bit and bedded down in the grass. Limok was hungry again, so the Dragonet went and caught a rabbit. She snagged one for her Rider too. Rather than light a fire, the girl had Limok roast the meat in the pan. It helped the hatchling to practice temperature control with the fire. One or two of the pieces of meat got charred, but Mirayah ate them anyway. After scrubbing the pan clean she bedded down, and Limok took the first watch.

Just before Mirayah went to sleep that night, she called Limok back down to her. With the immediate threat off of her back, her brain was spending more and more time turning the memories of Galeshire over, examining and re-examining them, torturing her with alternate scenarios and blame and self-reprimand. When Limok came into sight, Mirayah wordlessly opened her arms and beckoned the Dragonet into her embrace.

“Forget keeping watch. I don’t want to dream tonight. I’m… I’m afraid of what I’ll see in my sleep.”

Limok understood without needing to be told. She could feel Mirayah’s inner torment, though the hatchling wasn’t nearly as bothered by it. It seemed that Dragons didn’t share the human habit of dwelling on the past. Limok nosed her way under the blanket and cloak, coming to rest with her flank pressed up against Mirayah’s stomach and her head buried between Mirayah’s collarbone and shoulder. The Rider wrapped her arms around the little Dragon, noting with surprise that Limok had filled out a great deal since their first meeting. The baby was growing so fast- her head already came up to Mirayah’s knee, though it had only been a week. Soon enough they wouldn’t be able to sleep together like this.

With a forceful remonstrance Mirayah shoved these thoughts out of her head and tightened her arms around Limok, surrendering herself to sleep.

...

The next day passed much like the first, and the next, and the next. Half a camp biscuit for breakfast, rabbit or pheasant or groundhog for dinner, practice with the quarterstaff during her watch. Memories of old techniques re-surfaced, and it wasn’t long before Mirayah was completely confident with the weapon again. All she needed now was a longbow, and she would feel complete again.

They met no one on the road: not a single soul. The only other creatures to be seen were Limok’s prey and the eagles wheeling above. Mirayah supposed that without the minimal commerce offered by Galeshire, there was no reason for anyone to travel this stretch of road anymore.

The map said that Mirayah ought to reach the crossroads at the ninth day of travel. On the evening of the seventh day Mirayah spread the map out on the ground and began to count landmarks. The drinking water sources were marked, and they’d encountered at least one every day, if not two. By ticking them off Mirayah concluded that they were actually one day ahead: They’d reach the crossroads the next day.

But looking ahead, Mirayah couldn’t help but let out a groan of exasperation. They were traveling fast. Just not fast enough. They had such a long way to go, and Mirayah was tired of looking over her shoulder all the time. She just wanted to find somewhere where she could sit and breathe.

As Mirayah’s eyes left the thin red line of the road and traveled down towards the X that marked the ruined DragonRider Palace, Mirayah noticed another road marker leading from the X. It went north from the palace and exited the mountain range, then curved east again before fading out. It was probably a disused highway. The road systems of Dunía were slowly falling apart, since the dysfunctional government at the capitol of Darí Menara never got around to maintaining them. These sections of disused road were often occupied by bands of highwaymen who robbed and sometimes killed travelers imprudent enough to venture off the beaten path.

Seeing the disused road made Mirayah wonder about the West mountains in which the palace was built. Why would the road take such a circuitous route, rather than simply cutting through the mountains and connecting to the highway that led to Weëba? Were they so rugged that there was no other way through? Surely there must be a mountain pass between here and there…  
When Mirayah had first formulated a plan, she’d decided to cut cross-country once the road bent north, and go in a straight line to the Palace. But the lack of paths leading that direction hinted that perhaps the mountains were too harsh to take a direct route through. If there were no passes she’d have to add weeks of travel, going around the West Mountains the long way. With a sigh, she rolled the map back up and slipped it into its protective case. 

_“Are you going to eat that?”_ asked Limok, peering hungrily at the half a roasted ground-squirrel that sat in the pan. Mirayah said no, and Limok lifted her head from the Rider’s knee to gobble it up. With that she rolled over into the blankets, and Mirayah went to sit a few meters away. It was her turn to take first watch.

The next day at the crossroad outpost, Mirayah inevitably ran into the problem of money. There were only four buildings here: a stable, a blacksmith who also served as an armorer, a grocer, and a single-story, lice-infested inn. But as poor and mean as the place appeared, commodities here were still expensive. Ten silverpence and twenty coppers was hardly enough to replenish Mirayah’s supplies, let alone buy her a longbow from the armorer. So her solution, rather than stealing, was to win the weapon in a duel.

The armorer/blacksmith had a small shooting range out back, inside of a fenced-in-area. Mirayah immediately went straight for the bow with the heaviest draw weight, and even then, she had to leash her own strength to stop from snapping the massive longbow in two. She had worried that her skills and her aim would be rusty, but the moment she settled the grip in her left hand, the muscle memory flooded back. A toothy grin, like the bared teeth of a wolf, spread across her face as she ripped through a whole quiver of twenty-four arrows.

The armorer- a heavyset man with a round face, sandy beard, and squinty eyes- started watching her about halfway through her practice-shots. Immediately aware of him watching, she began to purposely miss things. The arrows always went exactly where she put them with ease, but she put them in haphazard spots on the targets, to make it look like her skills were less than they really were. She also pretended to struggle with bringing the bow to full draw. The armorer sneered at her. 

After loosing a few more practice shots, she turned to the armorer and bet the man that she could out-shoot him on his own range. She set the stakes at the armorer’s largest and finest longbow, along with the quiver and arrows, and a hundred silverpence to boot. If he beat her, she would stay in the outpost and work off the debt to him. Scoffing, he snatched the bow from her hands and proceeded to make a show out of how close he could get to the various bullseyes at the various distances. Mirayah resisted the urge to smile, hidden beneath the shadows of her cowl. The man seemed to enjoy murmuring under his breath about the impudence of darkies, especially darkie women. She ignored the hateful slur, taking solace in the knowledge that it wouldn’t be hard to prove him wrong.

He seemed to be under the impression that a girl like her wouldn’t even be able to bring the longbow (with its massive ninety-pound draw weight) to full draw, let alone fire it. It was as tall as she was, after all, and she wasn’t a large woman.

That just made the expression on his face all the sweeter, when she nailed each bullseye in quick succession and beat him at his own game.

She could see that he was sizing her up, trying to decide whether or not he could overpower her and bully her out of taking her winnings. But she was still holding the longbow, and he had seen with his own eyes how fast she could nock, draw, and aim. Her well-practiced ease seemed, to him, almost supernatural. So, muttering curses and flushing redder than a tomato, he reluctantly handed over her winnings. She heard the fruit vendor across the square laughing. Evidently the armorer was not well-liked in the outpost, because as Mirayah was leaving town with the longbow over her shoulder and the quiver at her waist, the fruit vendor tossed her an orange and shouted,

“Ha, ye whooped ‘is ass right good, didnya love? Oooh, the look on ‘is face! That’s the funniest shit I seen in years! You ‘ave that, sweetheart, a lil’ gift from me ta you! Ahaha!”

Mirayah nodded her thanks before returning to the highway. Limok, who had been watching from a hiding-place on top of a nearby hill, said-

_“I’ll admit that was smooth, but it was only a tiny bit better than outright theft. That was an unfair contest- you might as well have robbed him.”_

The girl simply shrugged, suppressing a smile as she began to peel her orange.

…

Days turned into weeks on the road. With a bow in her hands, Mirayah’s confidence quadrupled. She could shoot her own meat, and with her sharpened vision, her accuracy was double its previous preciseness. In five minutes, all of her old skill returned to her. She and Limok spent long hours hunting as they traveled, to kill the monotony as well as their dinner.

As the days passed Mirayah began to notice a change in Limok. The hatchling had a ravenous appetite, and she was always on the lookout for wild animals to chase as they walked. From the moment the Dragonet awoke to the moment she slept, she was focused on finding, catching, eating, and digesting food. In one day, the pair would have to halt two or three times to let Limok eat whatever small animal she caught: birds, mice, rabbits, prairie dogs, and once even a snake. She was hungry to the point of stupidity; meaning that Mirayah had to stop her from challenging animals that she wasn’t big enough to take on. Any fox or badger that crossed her path was also considered food, and her better judgment went out the window.

The only explanation for Limok’s appetite was her rapid growth. By the time two weeks was out, she had gone from the size of a small dog to the size of large one. She was too big to fit her whole body in Mirayah’s lap anymore, though she would still rest her head on the Rider’s thigh when they sat near the fire at night. 

Mirayah also noticed a shift in Limok’s proportions. Muscle was building up around her shoulders at the base of her wings, as well as in her haunches. Her wings had slowly begun to lengthen, and though they were still too small for her body, she had gained the ability to outstretch them. Often Mirayah would see her absentmindedly flex them open and closed, flapping them as a bird would ruffle its feathers.

_“She will fly soon,”_ the girl observed with a secret smile.

…

“C’mon love, you can do it!” Mirayah urged as the Limok tottered precariously on the edge of the conical wooden roof.

_“I thought you were keeping watch!”_ the Dragon shot back nervously. With the barest twitch of a smile Mirayah turned sideways once again so that she had one eye on the road and one on Limok. Her perch on the little roof with Limok was rather precarious, so in the action of turning Mirayah had to swing one leg over so she was straddling the top of the cone. Her heel clipped the end of Limok’s tail, unbalancing her. The Dragonet dug her claws into the wood to avoid falling.

_“Watch it!” she cried. “You almost made me fall!”_

“At least then you’d be forced to go,” Mirayah jibed, glancing around at the view of the surrounding terrain.

They had stopped to refill the canteen at a well. By day twenty-one of their journey, the grasses were beginning to fade and shorten, giving way to the flat hotness of the Wide Deserts. Mirayah had never been this far north, having spent her seven years on Dunia in the plantation country along the southern shores, but the desert was living up to its reputation.   
The pair consistently stopped at each water source to refill, even if they didn’t need it. This particular well was more important than any of the others though, for more than one reason. It was mid-afternoon- the hottest few hours of the day- and Mirayah and Limok were parched. The last well had been the morning of the day before, and the next water soak was at least another day away. They desperately needed this opportunity to refill, refresh, and rest while the heat made it unwise to travel.

The spot was also perfect for a flying experiment.

In the past miles, the road had been raised off of the ground by a few feet to keep it clear of the short scrub, scattered patches of grass, and cactuses that grew in its shadow. A short, steep drop usually led down to the unpaved desert, and to set up camp at night one had to either scramble down or jump clear.   
But the well was an exception in the monotonous terrain. A stream-bed, long dried up, ran perpendicular to the road. It sliced a piece out of the packed dirt, and right smack-dab in the middle of the pothole was the well. It was small- the stone lip only came up to Mirayah’s knees- but it sank deep into the ground to reach the water left over by the stream. Unlike the muddy soaks and scum-covered ponds they’d encountered thus far, this water was cool and clean. A wide, sloping roof spanned over the well, adding the extra benefit of shade.

Limok, after washing in the well water, had climbed up to the top of the roof to nap and sunbathe. As Mirayah had watched her flap her wings awkwardly to keep her balance during the climb, she’d noticed that the stream-bed ran slightly downhill towards the east. If Limok launched herself from the roof and glided, it would be her first time flying. She’d been practicing all the past week: flapping her wings when she jumped or bounded over an obstacle, then gliding that few feet back to the ground. Mirayah had suggested the plan to her, and she agreed now was as good a time as ever to try.

So there they were, balanced atop of a well in the blistering heat: Limok busy building up the nerve to jump, Mirayah busy deciding whether or not to push her off the edge.

_“You would not dare!”_ she warned, reading her Rider’s thoughts. _“You would not live to see if it worked!”_

Mirayah had no doubt she meant that. The wood underneath them groaned from holding Limok’s weight, which had broken a hundred pounds some time ago. With that kind of size, she could easily take on a full-grown man. Her huge wings were half-folded at the moment to leave Mirayah with room, but when extended they had a wingspan twice as long as Limok’s own body, tail not included. Mirayah finally decided not to push Limok, not only to preserve her own health, but because that would disrupt their plan anyway.

The plan was for Limok to spring from the edge of the roof and spread her wings, gliding down the length of the stream-bed until it became too narrow to accommodate her. At that point she would, with any luck, be able to flap upwards out of the ditch and into the sky. To Mirayah the action seemed quite simple, but to Limok it was another thing altogether. Her courage fluctuated- she would gather herself up and be leaning forward for the launch, but then pull back because another thought occurred to her that made her reconsider. She second-guessed herself, then third-guessed, then fourth-guessed. Every little thing came into question- the position of her wings, the wind, the length of the drop, and the way her claws dug into the wood shingles. As she stood on the precipice Mirayah could sense a vortex of doubts swirling through her head.

_“What if I just fall straight down like a rock? What if I cannot get out of the ditch in time, and run aground? What if I knock Mirayah off when I jump, and she is hurt? What if someone sees us? What if I am not big or old enough? What if-”_

_“Don’t think about that,”_ Mirayah told her mentally. Like a wave of cool water she swept through the Dragon’s thoughts and doused all the flaming fears. _“Don’t think about anything. Just remember that you can do this. You were born to do this.”_

Careful not to unbalance her, Mirayah placed a hand on her hindquarters as if to shove her. But rather than doing it, she simply let her hand rest there. She wasn’t so much pushing her off as she was sending her up- where she belonged. The physical touch and the mental words finally put the steel Limok needed into her nerves, and with that, she jumped.

...

As evening fell and the sky darkened, Mirayah began to lose sight of Limok. She could hear and smell a spring rain coming, and Limok’s high, wheeling figure passed in and out of clouds. The Dragon hadn’t come down all day- not since she’d taken to the air and found how easy it was for her. In just a few hours it seemed like she’d picked up everything there was to know about flying, and there was nothing she would rather do.

And there was nothing Mirayah would rather do than watch her as she went higher and higher on her strong, powerful wings. Sometimes she would climb up to the maximum height possible, and then tilt into a dizzying nosedive towards the ground. At the last moment she would extend her wings and come to a jarring stop, then begin to climb again. She loved it. There was a fierce pleasure in it: a savage exultation in the thrill of near-death, in her control over gravity and her ability to defy it. Now, with the gathering darkness, Mirayah was disappointed that she couldn’t watch the Dragon flying. She had to watch the road ahead of her, and the gathering clouds obscured the winged figure most of the time anyway.

And then, of course, the crack of thunder and the sudden cascade of rain that followed made it a moot point.

Mirayah was instantly soaked. Shouting with glee, the girl jumped off the road and looked for a convenient patch of heather to make camp in. On this windswept wasteland, there often wasn’t much else besides grass and cacti. But thankfully, she only had to run a quarter of a mile before she found a clump of rough grey brush. She quickly pulled the blanket out of her pack and threw it over the center of the bushes like a tarp, wax-side up, then crawled between the woody stalks into the cramped but dry shelter in the center. Using her rope and a few rocks she tied my blanket down firmly, in case the wind should pick it up and drag it away. Just as she’d finished this, the sound of Limok’s wingbeats drew near. The Dragon was less sure about the landing than the flying itself. When she landed, she face-planted in a growing pool of mud. Big brown spatters of it went flying in all directions as the Dragon crashed to earth in a tangle of claws and wing-sail.

“Oh no you don’t!” Mirayah cried, pushing Limok’s nose back outside when she tried to wriggle in. “You need a nice showering off before you come in here and rub your mud all over me!”

Limok silently capitulated, and waited just outside the gap Mirayah had made while the rain rinsed the mud off of her. With a sound like a canvas sail in the wind, she opened her wings and flapped them around in the beating rain. It was pouring down in sheets now. Big, fat drops smashed headlong into the dust before the parched ground gratefully accepted them. Before long it was coursing across the hard soil in rivulets, pooling in the low places and skating across the rocks. Mirayah felt just as grateful for its presence as the earth did, despite the inconvenience it caused. The drop in temperature and the fresh taste of the air was a welcome change from the desert’s filthy heat.

While Limok was preening in the rain, Mirayah chewed on some dried beef and half of a hard tack biscuit. The biscuit was a little more edible if she soaked each bite in water first, so she held it underneath the dripping rivulets of rain that skated off the blanket. This batch of hard tack, made with the supplies she’d bought at the crossroads awhile back, wasn't made with coffee and thus wasn't nearly as tasty as the pre-crossroads batch. But it put something in her belly. 

Finally, Limok was clean, and she wriggled into the shelter in the bushes. The pack was wedged into the very center of the dry spot to keep the supplies safe, and Mirayah had to scoot towards the cramped, prickly edge to make room for Limok. The water rolled off the Dragon’s scales like they were coated in oil, and her inner heat was evaporating what little moisture was trapped between skin and scale. Limok’s body warmed the tiny space better than a campfire.

For an hour or so they just laid in the dirt in silence, curled around each other and around the pack. Occasionally a drop of water slipped down onto them, but it was easy to ignore. Limok dropped off to sleep in a few minutes, but Mirayah stayed up and listened. The sound of the rain made her unusually happy, and the urge to smile was almost enough to turn the corners of her mouth upward. Limok nestled her nose into Mirayah’s shoulder, nudging her in her sleep, as if she wanted the Rider to go ahead and smile.

So Mirayah smiled in the privacy of the heather bushes, just for Limok.

...

The pair of them resumed their journey the next day once the rain had abated, and the next, and the next. Once that one storm was gone, the clouds cleared off and didn’t come back. The infinite expanses of sky above Mirayah shone a clear, blinding blue from dawn until dusk.

All of the monotonous time spent walking left room for the Rider’s mind to wander. While Limok flew high above, focusing on riding the air currents and the possibility of prey below, Mirayah was going through the repetitive motions of left, right, left, right, and left again. In the hours of travel between breaks Mirayah often found herself musing: a dangerous and risky pastime, for her. For if she looked back too far into the past she would only distress herself, and if she looked forward into the future she would give herself a headache trying to solve the possible puzzles and problems that hadn’t even come up yet. Limok constantly had to bring Mirayah back to the present, reminding her over and over again that the only place she could really do any good was the here and now. But the girl never seemed to listen, and before long her thoughts would be wandering again.

The days alternated between past and future and past again. But it was decidedly worse whenever Mirayah thought of what had once been, rather than what was to come. Many of her memories of the past were imperfect and incomplete, since time and trauma had erased chunks of time. Others images, by contrast, stood out in perfect, stark detail. The horrid pictures, bas-relief carvings suspended in time, would appear before her mind’s eye one after another. She would linger over each one, taking them out like well-used playing cards and feeling over the worn edges and dog-eared corners, dwelling over them with an unhealthy sort of intensity. Her parents’ faces, her last memory of her brother, the first time she was sold as a slave, the feeling of the touch of a whip on her back… She would rub her shoulder absentmindedly from time to time, feeling for the ridges of scar tissue that weren’t really there anymore. They showed up only as a few narrow diagonal slash-marks on her back and shoulders, dark stripes like the pelt of a tabby cat.

The knowledge that these physical marks had been sponged out was a relief to Mirayah, which served as a sort of balm. They hadn’t disappeared- she knew they would probably never leave her completely- but they weren’t so stark anymore. Thinking of that little mercy helped to drag her out of the mire. Limok’s presence was a boon as well. Sometimes the Dragon would intervene when she sensed her Rider’s internal pain, finding some odd topic of conversation or some silly game of wits for them to play. When Mirayah was alone she tended to dwell on these thoughts, inexorably drawn back to them as a moth is to a flame. But her Bond with Limok meant that she was never going to be alone again.


	5. Market day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirayah and Limok meet some rather special people

In the dusty, omnipresent heat of midday, a figure strode down the road with a ground-eating lope. Despite the baleful eye of the sun, her head remained sheltered under a scarf and her cloak remained clasped at her throat. Underneath it was a loose, nearly empty pack that hung from one shoulder. Slung over her other shoulder on top of the cloak was a massive longbow, which served as a nice deterrent against any passers-by who thought about stopping her. In her hand she swung a quarterstaff, sometimes setting the metal-shod butt of it on the ground with each step, or sometimes twirling it in lazy circles in her hand.

She had once been whistling as she walked to occupy her time, but now she kept her head down and silent. For in the distance there loomed the signal of humanity and civilization, her mixed blessing. The plateau ahead stood out from the desert like the cut-off stump of some massive tree. A city with walls of sandstone and thick, square towers squatted on top of it. The road the figure tread on was mostly empty, barring the few horse-drawn carts of farmers headed to market day. But she still felt watched because of that city above, peering from its perch with dark windows for eyes. She kept glancing up at it, taking in the wide-open gates, the traffic heading in and out, the distant thrumming of noise. It made her uneasy and thrilled at the same time.

 _“If you want to go, go!”_ Limok urged her from above. Mirayah didn’t answer. The Dragon was wheeling in lazy circles, hovering almost directly over Mirayah’s head at all times. From the ground, she appeared as nothing more than a hawk or carrion bird, she was so high up.

The reality was that the Dragon was getting close to maturity. In the weeks of travel from Galeshire to Weëba, Limok had gained height and weight at a frightening pace. Her shoulder was now level with Mirayah’s head, though her graceful heron-neck and imperious gaze gave her the illusion of greater size. Her strong wings and powerful hind legs could launch her into the air within moments, raising up a cloud of desert dust like a miniature dust storm. She could now blast fire so hot and steady she had nearly melted Mirayah’s pan, once.

She insisted that Mirayah could simply get on her back and they could fly, now- the exponentially faster mode of travel. She itched to move with speed, now that she could, and she resented Mirayah’s stubbornness in remaining on the ground.

_“Are you sure you do not want to turn east? Weëba is so close, and it is market day to boot. Your supplies are nearly exhausted. You need this. You have the silver.”_

Mirayah sighed, replying just as firmly as she had the last forty or so times.

"The detour isn't worth it."

_"But we will go much faster and you will be far less tired if we got you a horse. We could carry more water, too."_

"We've been over this. I'm fine jogging, and you can scout out water for me from up there. The desert may be barren, but I’ve survived worse."

_"That would not be necessary if you had a horse. Or, even better, if we flew."_

"I told you, we couldn’t without a saddle! There's nothing to prevent me from falling if I lose my grip."

 _"I am touched by your confidence in me,”_ the Dragon replied, her voice acerbic. _“Go to Weëba and get leather and make me a saddle.”_

"But I don’t have the money. Leather is expensive and the silver’s running low. I won’t be able to afford it… unless I take it."

_"I finally get over the stealing thing, and then you throw it back at me. Very classy.”_

“Alright, don’t get your tail in a knot. But really, we need to turn west and make straight for the Palace.”

_“You are being pigheaded,”_

“That’s right. And it’s your own fault for Bonding with me.”

Mirayah sighed to herself. She couldn’t stay mad at Limok. They got irritated sometimes, but it was like arguing with oneself- neither of them ever won the important arguments because both of them knew who was right.

As Mirayah passed a prickly pear cactus that grew on the side of the road, she swooped down and snatched up one of the huge, bright red fruit. She took half of the skin off with her knife and ate the refreshing, soft inner fruit out of its spiked wrapper. She’d learned to like the juicy red bulbs. They grew everywhere at this time of year. They reminded her of a cross between a watermelon and a raspberry. The water stored inside them kept her from getting thirsty too, which helped preserve her precious water supply.

Mirayah brushed at the fruit with annoyance. A hot breeze had sprung up, whipping grains of sand into her food. Her constitution was so strong now that she could ingest nearly anything, but sand was not on her menu.

 _“Mirayah…”_ Limok prompted, a frightened warning in her voice. The Rider’s head snapped up and she was suddenly alert.

“What it is? What’s wrong?”

_“You need to start running. Now.”_

“What? Why?”

_“It is coming, you have to-"_

“Oh, I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to scare me into going to Weëba. This is sad, Limok, really, I-"

 _“I am serious! Look!”_ she shoved her way into Mirayah’s mind and showed the Rider what she could see. Through Limok’s eyes Mirayah viewed her own figure, halted in the middle of the road, and the tiny details of the ground below. Limok turned her eyes west, and their collective stomachs dropped.

A huge, roiling cloud of dust was barreling toward Mirayah. It was a dust storm- she’d heard of them before. Scorching hot winds grabbed sand from the desert floor and pelted unlucky victims with grains that were moving so fast they pierced skin like arrows. This storm stretched for miles to the north and south, blotting out the horizon, and it was rushing eastward at a frightening pace. Limok could outfly it, especially if she stayed up where the air was too thin for the wind. But Mirayah was on the ground. She had to run.

“Shit. Guess we’re going to Weëba after all,” she murmured hoarsely, then wrenched herself back into her body. She turned and sprinted up the road towards the city.

She prayed she could outrun it until it dissipated, or find shelter before it caught up. The road was empty and it was just her. It was an entire day’s worth of travel to get to Weëba from here, the last bend in the road, and she wasn’t sure if she could last that long. This storm was moving ten times faster than the shadow-demons, so she would have to run ten times faster. She was stronger now than before. Being well-fed, well-slept, and well-exercised lent some extra speed to her limbs. But would it be enough?

Miles zipped by in a blur. She couldn’t tell if it was blurry because she was dashing headlong, or because the winds were slowly catching up. Sand beat on her legs, arms, and head- not fast enough to make her bleed, but enough to sting. She clutched her staff in her hand, struggling to hold onto it. The wind tugged at her cloak. The storm raced at her heels, never quite overtaking her, but never giving her a moment’s rest. Her lungs burned as she gasped for the hot, gritty air. The winds tugged, tugged, tugged at her pack. She struggled to keep it on, but nearly fell over as the wind yanked harder on her. Finally she worked her arms free, letting the pack drop on the road. The bow and quiver remained, but the weight of the pack lifted. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw the wind pick the canvas sack up and toss it far away.

 _“There goes long-term survival,”_ she thought.

How close was she to the city?

Some kind of shelter had to appear soon. It had to.

Limok, who was circling helplessly above as her Rider ran, suddenly crowed with victory. She couldn’t dive down and help without the risk of her wings being grabbed out of the air and dashed on the ground. But she could see the city ahead, with the road’s curving switchbacks and the little houses at the base of the plateau. It was just a few more miles, over a rise, and Mirayah would see it. Safety was coming.

As fast as it had sprung up, the storm dissipated.

Mirayah kept running a few hundred feet before she stumbled to a stop and fell to her knees. Limok longed to drop down to her Rider now that the storm was gone, but they were too close to Weëba. The Dragon could be seen. For her own safety, Mirayah restrained the Limok as she tried to keep the contents of her stomach down. She would not vomit again- she would would not! But unfortunately for her, she’d swallowed some sand and her body rejected it thoroughly.

With her breakfast now spread on the dusty road, she struggled to her feet and looked around. She spat bile and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. There was no one in view at the moment, but she could hear the distant sounds of the city ahead. Her headscarf had fallen out of place, so she re-wrapped it. She straightened her clothes and dusted herself off, though she was sure she still looked like hell. She was less worried about that than someone seeing her face, and suspecting she was an escaped slave. Finally, with her clothes as straightened out as they would ever get, she rolled her shoulders and set off up the road. It seemed she had to go to Weëba now: she didn’t have much choice.

…

As she drew nearer to the city she looked around at the steadily growing crowds around her. People and goods went up and down and up and down, hauling carts and horses, while hikers like her ducked between knots of people. The traffic snaked up the switchbacks towards Weëba and back again. For smaller parcels, there were sets of rope pulleys that lowered and lifted objects to the ground, to save time. Everyone here was busy yelling or shoving, jostling or bargaining, going about their daily business. For it was market day, and this was the busiest day of Weëba’s week.

 _“Did nobody see that massive storm?”_ Mirayah wondered to herself. She wound her way between bodies, headed toward the plateau. Her fingers gripped the top of her purse where it hung at her belt, keeping her hand over it in case a pickpocket smelled the silver.

Gazing around at these oblivious faces, seemingly unaware of the danger they’d nearly been in, confused her. Limok supplied that maybe, because the dust storm had been so brief and fast in its violence, they hadn’t noticed it. It had disappeared before it got right up to the plateau, though it had driven Mirayah very close. The Rider sighed and accepted that explanation, though it chafed at her logical reasoning. Shouldn’t someone have seen the dark stripe on the horizon, or heard the wind?

Moving with the flow of people, she climbed the looping road towards the city gates. On the way up, she paused every once in a while at the corner of a switchback to look out below her at the rapidly shrinking ground, or to glance up at the natural platform. It was hundreds of feet high, miles wide, and formed from russet-red rock. Even from a distance it had appeared impressive where it stood, alone above the jagged desert and the distant foothills. Long scores and streaks lined its flanks, formations of the weathering that occurred over time, and the eruptive inner processes of the earth that had raised this monolith.

Its moist, dark shadow fell on the eastern side, opposite from Mirayah. The sun was busy burning over the road- the city’s only access point from the desert below- and the people trying to reach it were quite occupied with toiling their way upward. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the girl found herself on the top lip of the plateau facing the city. A low stone wall, barely the height of her elbows, ringed the edge here to stop people from falling. She went and leaned against it, eyeing the stream of people flowing towards the city walls. The city rested about a mile away, occupying the center of the plateau’s wide-open space like a blot of paint on a blank canvas. There were wells all around, and here or there some grass and shrubs grew. Towards the base of the wall a few taller things, like bushes and young trees, provided shade. However, they were cropped short to prevent anyone climbing up to the battlements from the outside. Up this high in the air, it was a cooler and more temperate clime than on the ground. She speculated that maybe, some time ago, there had been fertile land up here. It was long since gone.

With a sigh, she rejoined those on the road and let the flow carry her to the city gates. Weëba’s governor, who lived in the castle in the center of the city, had posted garrison soldiers by the gates. They watched the comers and goers like hawks. Mirayah ducked her head as she passed, hiding from their gazes in the shadow just behind a covered cart.

Once inside the city, she made her way to the grand square. The buildings around the streets were close together and leaned over the narrow cobblestone paths. However, in the square they suddenly ceded to open space, in which the market had set up shop.

When market day was done, Mirayah knew this square must be much more pleasant, that the fountain in the center with its water spouts would tinkle lightly, that it would be a calm place. People in the city would come there for fresh air and a glimpse of the sky. But for now, it had sunk into sweaty, jostling chaos. There was a knot of people around the fountain reaching over each other for access to the water, and all around her the stall-keepers shouted to each other and to the crowd, thrusting their wares out into people’s faces to tempt them into spending their precious coin.

She eventually navigated her way to the poorer end of the market, where things were simpler and sometimes of worse quality, but altogether cheaper. She found a pack, a pan, a couple of detailed maps, and a canister for them. Her remaining silverpence were disappearing rapidly, and she knew with a sinking stomach that she didn’t have enough money to replace all her supplies. The last of it went to some very basic staples of food, and then she stood with an empty purse.

_“You’re not going to like this, Limok,” she cautioned, “But if I’m going to replace the bare minimum, I’ll need to pickpocket someone.”_

The Dragon, still wheeling high above, sighed internally. _“Well… there is nothing I can do to stop you. All I can say is, if you are going to steal, steal from someone who can spare it. And take as much as you can, because I would like to see you on a horse, or something.”_

Mirayah couldn't help but chuckled dryly.

_“So, in short: if I’m going to steal, make it worth my while?”_

_“Shut up. You know what I mean.”_

Shaking her head, Mirayah consented. In the shelter of a nearby alley she once again re-arranged her headscarf, pulling it tighter and closer to her face. The cowl of her hood went up, her conspicuous bow and quarterstaff were stashed away in a hiding spot, and she pulled out her belt knife. She settled it into her tunic sleeve, holding the blade pressed against the inside of her wrist and the handle in her fingers. It would remain there, hidden, until she needed it. Then she turned and found her way into the crowd again.

For a few minutes she circled aimlessly, her eyes sharp for anyone she thought was deserving of a good theft. She couldn’t read minds, but ages of practice had taught her how to pick out a rich bastard when she saw one. She had spent so much time serving men who thought their wealth made them higher-class citizens, after all, so she could spot their type easily in a crowd.

It took a little while, but eventually her ear caught an interesting development from across the square. At the opposite end, in a pricy section of the market, a baby was crying and there was loud arguing, even louder than the general clamor. Mirayah slipped between crushes and knots of people, closer to the noise.

A tired-looking mother in apron and bonnet was standing by a pricey fabric stall, looking mortified. She balanced a fussy and ill-looking baby on her hip, simultaneously trying to soothe the child and plead with the man before her. He leaned out from the wooden lip of the stall, heaving his bulk up so his flustered red face was thrust toward hers. He had a length of bright scarlet cloth in his hands that he was waving around. He was in the middle of shouting-

  
“…fucking brat spit up on my silk! You’ve gotta pay for this!”

The woman’s child wailed louder at the sight of him. She bowed her head and looked at him with entreating eyes.

“Sir, I’m so sorry! I know she din’ mean ta, she’s jest sick.”

“You still have to pay for it!” He growled. She sighed and nodded, looking down at her feet with an ‘of course this would happen to me today,’ sort of resignation.

“O’ course. Jest gimme a moment ta… git mah purse… how much fer that little spit-up bit?”

He snorted as he watched her attempt to free up one hand from the baby so she could reach into her waist pocket.

“Three silverpence a yard, no less.”

She woman’s head snapped up and her face drained. She stammered-

“I- I can’t pay tha’ much, I needs ta get the groceries fer the month and this is all I got! I… Can I just buy the ruined part?”

“The whole yard is ruined!” The merchant shouted back, making her cringe and lean away from his overbearing stare. The fleshy folds of his chin grew red as well, and the anger was spreading down to his neck with each minute. “I can’t sell it like this!”

The woman was on the verge of tears, and the numb look in her eyes was heartbreaking. It was like she could barely hear the squalling child in her arms.

“I… I… Sir, I got te feed mah family, mah husband and I only saved up this much for the month. Please, have a lil’ kindness-"

“Kindness doesn’t replace the silk, whore! Guards? Guards!”

Any thought Mirayah had had of intervening was banished when two uniformed men, just like the ones at the gate, answered the merchant’s summons. The woman’s face, already wan and drawn, grew even paler. Mirayah edged away, further to the side. She tugged her cowl a little further, ducking her head away from the guards’ view.

“Wha’s the problem, sir?” Asked the older of the two, dropping the chain mail cowl from his face and planting the butt of his spear on the cobblestones. The merchant huffed and crossed his arms.

“This wretched brat spit up on a yard of my silk, and now her whore of a mother won’t pay the three silverpence for it.”

The guard’s gaze switched to her.

“That true, ma’am?”

She turned her pleading gaze to him now, bowing her head a little in deference. She was still trying to calm the fussing child, whose noise seemed to annoy the second guard.

“Sir, it’s no’ that I won’t pay, I can’t. That’s more’n ‘alf of what we’ve saved up fer tha month, and I needs it ta feed mah family! My husband and I, we got two more lil’ ones ta feed-”

The guard sighed as if he were just tired of the whole affair.

“Alright, perhaps not three silverpence, but you’ve still got to pay him. How much do you have?”

“Umm… I uh…” the woman stuttered and reached for the purse at her hip, but the child made it hard for her to free her hand. It took what felt like an age for her to get a hold of the purse, and once the little sack was there, it was taking even longer to loose the ties one-handed. The fed-up merchant reached out from his stall and snatched it away, tearing the mouth open and spilling its contents onto his countertop. Four silverpence and a handful of copperpence clattered onto the wood. The guard waved a hand.

“Take two silverpence, no more. That’ll do.”

With a roll of his eye and an exasperated noise, the merchant picked out the specified coins and dropped them into his own pocket. The woman watched with unshed tears hanging in her eyes. Then he packed the other two silverpence and the rest of the coppers back into the purse and tossed it back to her. She tried to catch it one-handed and failed. While she awkwardly stooped to get it, he cut the yard of silk free from the ream without bothering to wipe the spit-up off, wrapped it in thin paper, tied it, and handed it off with a sharp glare. The woman took it, thanked the merchant and the guards in a voice that trembled, and then scurried away into the crowd as fast as her legs could carry her.

Mirayah looked after her with sympathy. What she would have given to have made it in time, to have intervened before the guards had come. But her instincts of self-preservation had held her back, and now her chance to help the woman was gone.

However, as the guards turned away and the merchant settled into his seat in the stall, Mirayah fixed her eyes on him and decided that she could at least get retribution.

 _“I’ll make that prick wish he’d stayed home today,”_ she thought.

As the cloth merchant turned and began to chat with the jeweler next to him, Mirayah tugged her hood down so her face was somewhat visible beneath the scarf. She approached the stall. He was occupied with his conversation for a few moments, which gave her a chance to examine his setup before he noticed her. Reams and reams of silks, satins, velvets, and embroidered cloths of every shape, color, and size occupied the back walls of his stall and the floors. Underneath his chair was a strongbox that no doubt held most of his day’s earnings. That would be too hard to get to without being caught. Off-limits. But the purse at his belt, on the other hand, hung taut on its strings. It was weighed down by who-knew-how-many coins, and it would prove a much easier target.

Just before he turned his head and saw her there, she also took note of the clay water jug and cup on the counter, to one side. He no doubt used it to keep himself refreshed in the day. It was easily within reach, and offered her an opportunity for distraction. All she needed was to get him free of his stall and into the flowing crowds of people, where she could maneuver unnoticed.

He greeted her coldly from his seat, looked her up and down, and then sneered. In both clothing, accoutrement, and skin tone she had the appearance of someone without the means to afford a single one of his wares. He was turning to whisper something to his companion when she leaned over the counter and pointed to a ream of silk on the ground before his feet. She wondered,

“What’s this pattern called?”

He glanced at her as if she’d asked him a stupid or unreasonable question, then rolled his eyes again.

“Midnight ivy.”

“And this one?”

“Candle flames.”

She then beckoned him a little closer as if she couldn’t hear, which prompted him out of his seat. Growing more obviously annoyed by the second, he rose and repeated the name. While he was standing, she leaned over closer to the water jug, which drew him even closer to see what she was pointing at.

“And thi- shit, I’m so sorry!” She exclaimed as she bumped the pitcher over. A rush of water splashed over his trousers, and the rest drained down to the cobblestones. The man cursed and turned to reprimand her, but she was already ducking away into the crowd. Quickly, she pulled her cowl up to hide her face.

She hid to the side where he wouldn’t see her, and watched from within the shadows of her hood as he asked his companion to watch over his strong-box. Then he snatched up his pitcher and left the stall. He made his way through the crowd toward the fountain, pushing past those who didn’t automatically move. She followed just in his wake, close enough not to lose him but not so close he would recognize her. When he reached the lip of the basin and dunked the pitcher into the pool of clean water, she came right up behind him and reached rudely over his shoulder toward one of the falling streams of water, cupping her hand and bringing the water back to her mouth. He glanced at her with his lip curled in disdain as she dribbled some from her knuckle onto his shoulder, but by then she had used the hidden blade in her other hand to cut the taut strings of his purse. She caught the bulging sack in the same hand, drew it within the folds of her cloak, turned away, and was gone.

She fetched her quarterstaff and bow from their hiding spot. Out of the city she went, away from the square and the guards that would surely be summoned the moment the merchant discovered his purse was missing. It was a futile exercise for them to search for her- tracing where it happened and who did it was nearly impossible. No doubt there was at least five accounts of pick-pocketing every market day, and this one was no different. She just had to lay low for a few minutes, and once the clamor inevitably died down, she would return to make her purchases.

In the meantime, once Mirayah got out the gates, she ducked aside into the shaded thickets of scrub and trees that ringed the foot of the outer wall. Here a few vagabonds wandered among the sparse fronds, taking advantage of the shade. She found a spot that was clear of them, on the narrow footpath that wound its way through the thin layer of scrub. With her back leaning to the wall she opened the purse up and took stock of its contents.

There, to her delight, she discovered a small fortune. Or, at least, it seemed like a small fortune to her, since she’d never handled this much money in her life. About half of the sack’s ample contents was silverpence, one fourth was copperpence, and the remaining fourth was goldpence. She would certainly be able to buy a modest steed with this, along with her supplies. Either that, or she could buy leather and supplies for a Dragon saddle, and her supplies. She estimated she couldn’t afford both, not if she wanted to have a little left for safe-keeping.

 _“The horse then, I think,”_ Limok chimed in. _“Later on, when I have grown a little bigger and I have more endurance to carry you with, you can just modify the horse’s saddle to fit me. That ought to work.”_

Mirayah silently agreed. The Rider was just about to put a few coins in her own pockets and then stow the rest safely in her bag when a twig snapped nearby. She glanced up, and to her surprise discovered that a figure on horseback was looking down at her from his saddle. The horse blocked her way. His steed, a handsome bay, was lathered and worn as if it had run just as far and fast as she had earlier that day. The rider appeared in no better condition, with his dust-stained clothes and the exhaustion that pervaded every angle and line of his body. She wondered if he had been caught in the dust storm too.

The two regarded each other from a few feet away, their hidden eyes each seeking the other’s. The man had a kerchief wound around his forehead, not unlike Mirayah’s scarf, and the cowl of his cloak was also raised so half his face was thrown into indistinct shadow. He wore a scarf around his neck and chest. All she could make out of his features was the stubble-clad jaw and the stoney, tired set of the mouth. Yet though he was obviously travel-worn, he held his back straight and his shoulders with an almost habitual pride. Indeed, the prim and proper way he sat his horse, as well as the sword he carried at his side, all hinted at nobility.

Despite these differences, there was something unmistakably familiar about him. Something about the way he held himself, the way he dressed, made it like looking in a mirror, for her. And she could tell by the way that he leaned towards her in the saddle, ever-so-slightly, that he was making the exact same observations about her.

Neither of them moved as they sized each other up, their bodies tense and still. Then the man let out a sigh and tilted his head at her.

“Did you steal that money?” he wondered, in a voice rough and cracking with disuse.

“Of course not. And even if I did, it'd be none of your business," Mirayah snapped. She had another string of lies ready on her tongue, but he simply turned away with a sigh, as if he wasn't satisfied with her response but had no time or energy to pry. The horse plodded past her, its head hanging. She watched him the entire way, until he was past the gates and out of sight. She then turned back to her own business, though something about the strange man kept him on the edge of her thoughts. Limok and Mirayah didn't know why he intrigued them so much, but he did. She couldn’t shake the feeling of familiarity.

Back in the square, the first thing Mirayah bought was a new cloak to replace her dirty, tattered, travel-worn one. She changed in a side-alley to avoid being seen, then folded up the old cloak and stowed it away. After that, she replaced rest of the contents of her pack and then re-filled her water skin. Before she left, she stopped by a grocer and picked out a few spices and some more ingredients for travel rations. All of this took about an hour. Satisfied with her haul, she exited the square and made her way through traffic, down the road towards the stables.  
The sound of hooves came up behind her just as she reached the foot of the plateau. She moved to the right to let the horseman pass, but as he did, she realized that it was the same one. There it was- that strange sensation of familiarity. She couldn't help herself. She began to follow him. His tall battle-charger stuck up from the crowd like a sore thumb, making him easy to keep sight of. And without knowing it she passed right by the stables, no longer interested in what they had to offer.

…

She had left Weëba behind ages ago, following the trail of the man on horseback. The road was mostly empty at this point, down to the last few stragglers who had yet to find places to take supper. But now the faces and figures that passed her on the road were completely strange. She had lost him. She turned around twice in place, her sharp eyes swooping and examining the surroundings for signs. There was nothing. With a sigh she went to the side of the road and began to sweep back and forth for prints. After a minute or two of this she discovered a couple of small indicators- a broken cactus paddle, a dislodged rock, a vague impression in soft soil- and followed them. She buried her pack in the shelter of a dried-up bush to hide it, left her quarterstaff behind, and un-slung her bow from her back.

As she bent low and slipped over the nearest hill, she nocked an arrow on the string. Armed thus, she continued to keep herself low to the ground as she stalked along the trail, over sand dunes, across rises, and down dry gullies. It seemed her quarry had delved off the road, then once he’d got a mile or so away from it, he had turned left and begun to follow the path carved by a long-dry stream bed. By now they had left the shadow of the city behind. The tiny signs of his passage continued along the bank, though she rarely made out the outline of an actual print. He was smart and he kept to the places where the soil was harder-packed, the vegetation thinner. He was good at this sneaking-and-hiding thing, it seemed. Just not as good as she was.

The banks suddenly widened as the waterway bent around the base of a rise, scooping out a wide, smooth depression in the ground. In the bottom of this little sheltered pocket, Mirayah noticed the cold, ashy remains of a campfire. She slid down into it and knelt by the black patch. She lightly brushed the tips of her fingers over the ash, feeling for any sign of heat. There was a very slight warmth still lingering in the center of it, though the cinders had long been put out. She withdrew her hand, wiped the ash off on her thigh, and stood again, looking around her.

Without warning, an enraged roar filled the desert. She glanced upward and there, plummeting down from the shelter of a low, scudding cloud, was a massive golden shape. Fire spilled from its maw and huge, wicked black talons extended towards her. She was frozen there on the ground like a mouse below the shadow of a stooping hawk, her eyes wide with shock. Then, moments before certain death, an answering roar matched the first and another shape appeared- smaller, and silver. Limok barreled into the aggressor, driving her shoulder into his. The two plowed into the ground a hundred feet away, scoring a long furrow in the sandy soil like the crater of a fallen star. At the end of the trail lay a tangle of limbs, extended wings, and tails entangled between two unconscious bodies.

The jarring sound of their impact, and the possibility that Limok could be injured, snapped Mirayah out of her brief paralysis. But before she could make a move to help Limok, she suddenly felt the dangerous, cold pricking of steel on her throat. There was a blade laid over her shoulder, its edge pressed against her neck and the tip under her chin. She immediately stiffened, her back going rigid and her head raising a little to ease her throat away from the blade.

“Don’t move,” commanded someone behind her. It was the same man as before- the one on horseback, with his rusted-over voice. “Set the bow on the ground. Unsheathe your belt knife and drop it. Slowly.”

She obeyed, her motions cautious and exaggerated. She didn’t want to antagonize him- he was only reacting in response to her, not the other way around. The man let her turn around and face him with her hands raised to show that she meant no harm. Now his hood was lowered, and she noticed pleasant hazel-green eyes, a symmetrical square face, and ragged, long blonde hair. He had about an inch of height on her, since she was a bit tall for a woman and he was just average height for a man. Even under the obscuring folds of his clothing, she could see that he had broad shoulders and an athletic build. He was sun-tanned and wind-blown with a couple of gentle smile lines, but the set of his face was hard; almost unnaturally so.  
The next thing she noticed directly after this was that the kerchief wrapped around his head was slipping. And the ears underneath it appeared misshapen: different.

“Why are you following me?” he demanded. Mirayah wasn’t listening. She was squinting at his ears, trying to trace the shape of them underneath the little red cloth. He noticed her and, with the free hand that wasn’t holding the sword to her neck, adjusted it. Her eyes widened.

“Your ears. They’re-”

“That’s irrelevant!” he barked, cutting her off and pressing the sword a little harder. Now he was getting anxious, defensive. He repeated, “Why are you following me?”

“Please,” she replied, breathlessly, “Let me show you.”

Her hand went to her scarf to undo it. She was risking exposure, but if she was right, it would pay off.

“Don’t move!” he barked again, waving her hand away. “I’ll do that myself, thank you very much.”

Mirayah desisted, and allowed him to flick her hood back with the tip of his sword. He reached out with his free hand and took the end of the scarf from her shoulder, throwing the loop from around her neck and then tugging it away. Her dark hair spilled out from underneath. A shiver passed over her as the top part of her DragonMark, exposed by the collar of her tunic, felt the rush of air over it. Her pointed ears twitched.

The man’s face suddenly relaxed into an expression of wonder, of vague awe and an almost disbelieving surprise. The point of his sword lowered as he yanked the kerchief from his head and tugged his scarf down. He stood exposed with his pointed ears bare and the traces of gold obvious on his collar.

A Rider.

The man grinned in relief. The sword hit the ground and suddenly Mirayah was smothered in a crushing, joyful embrace. He was laughing aloud and patting her on the back.

“Oh, I can’t believe it!” he exclaimed, now separating and holding her at arm’s length. “Another Rider! Tobias was right after all, that bastard!”

Mirayah looked confused, and a little uncomfortable.

“Who- alright first of all, who’s Tobias?”

The Rider clapped his hand on her shoulder in a friendly way and then finally let her go. His attention had already switched to the pile of unconscious Dragons at the other end of the campsite.

“Tobias is nobody… Nobody at all. Help me get them untangled?”

She wordlessly followed him as he scrambled over the hill to where Limok and the other beast lay. The golden Dragon was nearly twice Limok’s size, and built with the powerful muscling of a bull. Its great wedge of a head was big enough to bite a horse in two, and it reminded Mirayah in shape and color of Limok’s sire.

The stranger told Mirayah as the two of them dragged Limok free that his Dragon was named Birul, and that he hadn’t realized who she was when he attacked her. Birul was too big for them to move, so they disentangled Limok and pulled her a few feet away. Mirayah recognized Birul’s name to be the root of a Sevharan word, slightly modified. It loosely translated to ‘the sun’, but in the sense of the personification of the sun that featured in Sevharan folk stories, not in the sense of the actual orb that hung in the sky. Evidently this Rider was at least a little familiar with the Sevharans tongue. Mirayah felt a slight thrill of approval, like maybe she could grow to like this person. He had an un-pretentious air about him, which she appreciated.  
When the two beasts had been laid down on their sides and checked over for injuries (which were thankfully absent), Mirayah and the other Rider met in the middle again. He extended a hand to shake and she took it. It was dry, with the palm-calluses of a warrior.

“My name’s Aaron,” he supplied, “Aaron Price.”

Mirayah raised an eyebrow. The inflection of his voice as he supplied his last name was slightly off, as if he had nearly let his tongue slip and he had reminded himself at the last minute what name to give. She knew then that he was lying about it, but chose not to pursue it for now- not when they had only just decided not to kill each other.

“I’m Mirayah,” she replied. Now it was his turn to raise an eyebrow.

“What,” he wondered, “no surname?”

“I’m Sevharan,” she supplied, “I have none, and I took none.”

On Sevhara there were no last names because it strengthened divisiveness between the members of a tribe, who were supposed to function as one large, tight-knit family. The practice for slaves who had come directly from Sevhara, then, was to adopt the surname of whoever their first master was. But Mirayah had never accepted nor responded to those names. Several had attempted to label her with their own surnames as she passed from hand to hand, but she herself scorned them. Aaron seemed to know this without being told and Mirayah thought he gave her the slightest smile, a look of approval. She couldn’t be sure, but it was nearly there.

They waited in companionable silence for the Dragons to wake up. Birul came to first, and the moment his eyes opened, he leapt to his feet snarling. His head swung back and forth in search of the opponent who had knocked him from the sky. Aaron calmed him down with a few words, and he ceased his posturing and hissing. The golden Dragon bent his head down and regarded Mirayah with one huge liquid eye, the vertical pupil narrowing and contracting to focus on her. Then Birul huffed in greeting, bobbed his head, and straightened back up. Aaron and his Dragon fell to conversing while Mirayah patiently sat by Limok’s head to wait.

The process repeated itself with the smaller Dragon, who regained consciousness in an explosion of anger. Mirayah threw her hands up and imposed herself between Birul and Limok, making shushing noises and explaining to her what had happened. Limok exhaled, flashed Birul a slow sort of glare, but then relaxed. She came over to Aaron and sniffed the top of his head, ruffling his hair. He accepted it, and then bowed low as he introduced himself.

The two Dragons stretched out their limbs, still looking each other over curiously. Then they took to the air again, leaving the Riders to go back about their business. Once they had seen their Dragons into the sky the pair turned back towards the road. Aaron’s horse had been left up the riverbed a ways, and they fetched it. Aaron introduced her to the horse, telling her that his name was Forsooth. As he mounted up he asked,

“Do you have a horse?”

She shook her head.

“Were you gonna buy one?”

She nodded.

“Alright then, if you want to get your things then I can accompany you, and help you find a good one.”

“I don’t need your help. I know my horses. But if you want to come along, you may.”

Aaron nodded, flashed her a smile, and then turned with her towards the road. They walked side-by-side in silence. She could tell by the way he shifted in his saddle and occasionally glanced at her that he wanted to make conversation. His lip even twitched occasionally. But her cold, masked face, her taciturn nature, and the way she quickly covered herself up again, seemed to discourage it. Eventually he, too, re-wrapped his scarf and tied his kerchief. They found the road just as the traffic was calming down. People were settling into seats with friends and family to take their supper, and so for now the two Riders had the path to themselves.

They detoured to retrieve Mirayah’s quarterstaff and pack. As she shouldered it back underneath her cloak, Aaron raised an eyebrow.

“Ironic you should choose a staff, of all things” he commented under his breath. She narrowed her eyes.

“Ironic? Why?”

The man gave his head a little shake as if chastising himself for saying such a thing. He shrugged. “No reason, at least, not that’s important right now. And by the way, I’m curious: did you actually steal that money, from earlier?”

She snorted. “Still on that, are we? Well… to be truthful, yes I did. But it was from a real prick who deserved it.”

Aaron laughed once. “I’m sure. Limok probably wouldn’t let you, otherwise. Dragons do like to keep you on the narrow and straight, you know?”

“I do know,” she replied with a nod. Then they were quiet again for a while. Finally they found the stable where it stood at the foot of the plateau. Aaron dismounted outside and looped Forsooth’s reins over the railing outside.

She browsed the barn for a little bit, unsatisfied with the types of horses stocked there. She missed the horses she had learned to ride on, the Sevharan paints with their intelligent eyes and aquiline noses. Most of the mounts here were either beasts of burden, or else they were bred after the fashion of the Dunían battle-charger. These ones were too big, too unruly, too ill-trained for her. She was used to a horse that would respond to the smallest squeeze of the knee and the gentlest twitch of the reins, a smart and fast horse she could ride with just a blanket and a simplified bridle: the Sevharan way.

Aaron leaned against the barn door and watched her from underneath his cowl, his eyes following her with veiled curiosity as she wandered up and down the rows of stalls, trailing her fingers along the stall doors. Her behavior apparently baffled him. She had passed over plenty of fine destriers and thoroughbreds. What the hell was she looking for, if not that?  
Finally, in the back corner in a stall that desperately needed to be cleaned, Mirayah discovered the hidden gem she’d been after. The stallion was a young and finely built one, but because he appeared to be a cross-breed between the battle-charger and the Sevharan paint, the price for him was low. He seemed restless in his stall, pacing back and forth with the pent-up energy of a young horse that had only just been broken in. There was no name plaque on him, unlike the others. No one had bothered to name him, not once he had been cast aside and labeled as ‘difficult’.

The stable-hand and Aaron both wrinkled their noses when she made her choice. She grabbed the tack too, almost as an afterthought, as if she had almost forgotten that tack was something she needed. The stable hand opened his mouth to question her decision, and possibly make another suggestion, but her glare shut him up. Something about her odd grey stare, her sharp almond eyes, unsettled him. He exchanged the money and then muttered something about good riddance as the pair left with the horse.

As she tacked the horse up for the first time, murmuring greetings in her own language and running a hand up and down his long neck, Aaron asked-

“Why that one?”

“He is a fine beast. Finer than Forsooth, I would argue, if you know how to ride him right.”

Aaron glanced critically from his own horse, tall and fine-boned with his straight nose and shining bay coat, to Mirayah’s. But he refrained from commenting out of politeness, and instead wondered,

“What will you name him, then?”

“Verna,” she replied as she vaulted into the seat. The paint, who had seemed restless and ill-broken before, appeared remarkably calmer under her guidance. Aaron’s eyes took on a mischievous sparkle as he mounted up and the two trotted out to the road side-by-side.

“Who’s Verna, to you?”

“Nobody. It’s just a name,” she snapped, a little too quick. He grinned and leaned over to nudge her with his elbow.

“Ah ah ah, not so fast. Who’s Verna, huh? Tell me!”

She ignored his irrepressible smile and turned away with a huff, squeezing her steed’s flank to make him pull away by a couple of strides. Aaron kicked his own horse up further and came level with her again. Now his look was mild and beseeching.

“C’mon now Mirayah, we should be more open with each other. We’ve got to stick together now, you and me. There’s not a whole lot else in this world to stick to. We might as well get to know one another.”

Mirayah sighed and looked off into the open desert before her. They were leaving Weëba’s shadow and with each mile she felt more and more as if she was alone with him. She knew he was right in a way, and so she sighed and answered-

“Fine. I’ll tell you about Verna if you answer me a few questions first.”

“Fire away!” he laughed. She thought about it for a moment, then said-

“How old is Birul?”

“He’s fifty-one years old, as of last month.”

Mirayah now turned to look at him, more than a little surprised.

“Fifty one?! But you look like you can’t be older than twenty-five.”

He winked at her. “That’s the magic of being a DragonRider. We’ll look this way until the day we die.”

She now asked, “Do you know how to use magic, then?”

He nodded and waved a hand almost dismissively. “Of course, of course, and you’ll learn as soon as we can get back to my safe haven. And before you ask, I can ride Birul too, if that was what you were about to say next. It just suits my purpose better to remain on the ground right now.”

“And what purpose is that?” she prompted, curious about where this amiable chatter was headed. He shrugged, his mouth closing to a thin line.

“You’ll find out soon enough. What about you then, hm? Who is Verna to you?”

Mirayah immediately looked away again, unable to maintain any kind of eye contact. She had once heard someone say that eyes were the windows into the soul, and so when topics like this came up she habitually averted her gaze, to keep from being read. Her mind was once again flashing with stark memory as she thought about it. She replied quietly-

“He was my younger brother.”

 _“Was?_ Has he passed?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in seven years.”

“Isn’t it a bit premature to assume he’s dead, then?”

She paused a long time, then said in a voice almost down now to a whisper-

“…It’s easier to think of him that way.”

“…Easier than what?”

“Than picturing him living as a slave. This way I can at least remember him as he was.”

There was an extended silence between the two, then she started as she felt Aaron’s hand fall on her shoulder. When she met his gaze his look was sympathetic, though not pitying.

“If he’s still alive, we’ll find him.”

Her grey eyes searched his for awhile. Their horses had stopped side by side and still his hand remained on her shoulder.

“You really mean that?” she prompted, almost suspiciously. He nodded.

“I really do. In fact, I promise.”

Now he took his hand back and offered it to shake. She hesitated, looked at it as if it was a venomous thing that could bite her. But the thought of seeing her brother again was too tempting, too blissful and naïvely hopeful to refuse. So she took his hand and squeezed it in agreement. Then, without another word, the two turned once again down the road.


	6. Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirayah and Aaron's budding friendship is tested as they strike out across the unforgiving Dunían deserts.

Aaron tried to make small talk with Mirayah throughout the rest of the afternoon as they settled into their little camp in the riverbed. She was unused to the idea of conversation, though he seemed to take a special pleasure in speaking to another human with whom he could be open and truthful, as if he hadn’t been able to do so for far too long. From time to time she humored him with a response, but the older Rider filled most of the extra space himself. His talk was an almost constant stream of pleasant chatter.

Mirayah wondered uneasily, _“How long has this man been alone?”_

Still, in a way, it was pleasant for Mirayah too. When they had got back to the riverbed camp and the cold fire she was able to unwind her scarf again, and shake her hair loose. She gave a long sigh of contentment before turning to brush out Verna’s coat of the little dust he had gained during the walk. She became aware a moment or two into her task that Aaron was staring at her from the other side of the basin, where he was doing the same chore. His eyes weren’t hungry or menacing, just oddly pensive. Slightly uncomfortable, Mirayah pretended not to notice and went back to brushing her horse.

While Limok and Birul flew off away from Weëba to find something to eat, the two Riders sat down to a late supper. The Dragons were already becoming fast friends. Mirayah had her mental finger on the pulse of their conversation and she found that, although Birul dodged some of Limok’s questions, he was generally a sweet and trustworthy thing. This improved her opinions of Aaron a great deal, for she knew firsthand that Dragons were nearly incapable of insincerity, and that their personalities echoed their Riders’.

A few minutes after the camp bread was ready, the two sat down on their horse’s blankets across the fire from each other. Between bites of food and short responses to Aaron’s conversation, Mirayah had her sewing kit out and was busy modifying the saddle and bridle she’d bought. She’d ripped out most of the hard leather pieces, leaving only a thin, soft seat behind along with the horn of the pommel. She was now sewing the ripped seams shut again, and shortening the stirrups. Aaron watched her curiously.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” He wondered at length.

“Back home. Sevhara.”

“Isn’t it harder to ride? You’ve taken the bit out of the bridle too, how do you steer?”

“Sevharan paints are more sensitive than Dunían battle-chargers. Verna will know what I want when I ask it. 

Aaron chuckled. “You must be a much finer rider than I am! I think I’d fall off without a saddle-seat!”

Mirayah paused and glanced up from her work, her hand hovering with the thread still stretched out and the needle frozen mid-stitch. “Modest of you to admit that a woman is better than you at something, let alone a darkie woman.”

How she hated that derogatory word, ‘darkie’. But it was necessary for her to say it, to see his response. Aaron winced at her use of the word and replied-

“My ego isn’t so fragile that I can’t acknowledge a person of great skill, regardless.”

His hazel gaze met her grey one in the middle, a little sternly, as if he’d recognized what she was doing. She rewarded him with the hint of a smile- just an upward twitch at the corner of her lips. He had passed her test quite nicely. Now it was his turn. He tilted his head a little and said,

“Forgive me for being so forward, but you’re not like most of the Sevharans I’ve met. You speak as if you’ve been educated in Dunía. And you look different from others.”

Mirayah resumed her work and shrugged, replying,

“I was born on Sevhara, but my father was Dunían."

“How did he end up on Sevhara?”

“It’s… an interesting story. He was the captain of a trade ship, and he was successful by his own means from a young age. During a trade negotiation, while he was staying in our village, he strayed too far into the forest and was attacked by a panther. He was close to death when my mother found him. She brought him back to her own home and cared for him. His crew had to leave him behind, as he wasn’t fit to travel. They promised to return in a few months and bring him back to Dunía on their next trade run, but by that time he had quite fallen in love with my mother, and with the way we lived.”

Aaron looked a little surprised. “I can’t imagine any Dunían wanting to stay there. Not, of course, as an insult to your home, Mirayah. It’s just so different there, it seems strange that a Dunían would find it more favorable than his own land. What made your father different?”

Mirayah shrugged to show that she took no offense.

“My father always described himself as a hopeless wanderer before he met my mother, but he said he had found home on Sevhara. This wasn’t exactly well-received by his Dunían peers, but my mother’s tribe was happy to accept him. I think perhaps he was alienated from his family on Dunía for a long time. He never talked about it, but… one can infer. You don’t get to be a ship’s captain at a young age by staying with your family and marrying some nice girl from town.”

Aaron laughed. “Too true, too true. I suppose I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t left home when I was kid. Your father sounds like an interesting man. Did he teach you Dunían? You speak it well, almost without an accent.”

She nodded and set the saddle, which was basically complete, aside. She picked the bridle back up now and started re-adjusting the straps, removing the ones she thought were unnecessary.

“He taught the entire village to read and write his own language while they taught him ours. I grew up with both. I have a hint of his skin tone, and his eyes.”

“I see that. Your eyes are very…”

“Odd?”

“I was going to say distinctive.”

“You’re much too kind,” she said sardonically. He grinned in return.

“Well I genuinely don’t think they’re odd at all. They suit you.”

She said nothing in reply but instead reached up to scratch her cheek, feeling for the ridge of scar tissue that was no longer there. It was a self-conscious sort of gesture. She knew the scar still presented itself as a thin dark line, but she was still sometimes bewildered by the absence of its texture. She was used to being able to feel the reminder. She rubbed at her cheek as if to wipe it away, and then resumed her work. All of this didn’t go unnoticed by Aaron, who still seemed to be waiting for a response.

“Were did you get that scar?” he wondered, fishing for another conversation topic.

“The same place any Sevharan gets scars here.”

Aaron averted his gaze bashfully, his cheeks flushing red.

“Ah. Right. You said… seven years?”

“Since what?”

“Since you saw your brother. Is that how long you were…?”

“A slave? Yes.”

“…That would make you thirteen, then. So young. Did you… did you at least get to stay with your parents? I know some young children get to follow their mothers.”  
Her hand paused again, a momentary hitch in her motion as if her internal mechanisms had briefly jammed. Then she shook her head, keeping her eyes on her work.

“No. They were both killed the night we were taken.”

“…Oh. I’m sorry.”

“For what? You didn’t wield the spear. And the bastard who did is dead.”

“May I ask how?”

“Ha! As much as I wish it was by my hand, he simply fell ill on the trip back to Dunía. It wasn’t exactly the cleanest boat, he was one of many. Though… perhaps I helped the process of his  
death along. I was a right fucking nuisance. The captain had grey in his hair by the time we reached port.”

Aaron chuckled grimly.

“I’m sure he did.”

Before Aaron could think up some other question to ask her in the wake of that particular conversation’s end, Mirayah interjected.

“So…” she began, “Fifty-one years, then? Does that make you seventy?”

He winked. “Seventy-two, but yes.”

Mirayah gave a dry chuckle. “You look good for seventy-two.”

“You will too, when you’re my age!”

“And you’ve been hiding, all this time? Where?”

“The abandoned DragonRider Palace, of course. Is that where you were headed?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, Birul and I must accompany you back! It’s dangerous territory between here and there.”

She was about two seconds away from saying it was fine, that she could take care of herself, but then she stopped herself. A look at his smiling hazel eyes told her that this was a gesture of good faith, not some insult to her capability and independence. She chanced a smile back, and without saying anything, the two seemed to reach an understanding.

…

But even if the two Riders had agreed to get along, Mirayah had a feeling that there was something Aaron and Birul weren’t sharing. As the four new friends divvyed up watch that night, Limok commented to Mirayah privately-

_“They seem wary of something, like they expect danger. Do you think they are worried about more than just highway robbers?”_

_“I would put money on it,”_ Mirayah replied, thinking of Galeshire and repressing a shiver.

But all four watches passed uneventfully, and they left early the next morning. Mirayah had to admit that the extra sleep was nice- she felt refreshed. Aaron continued conversing with her as they rode into the desert, bouncing comments and anecdotes off of her like a lonely child bounces a ball off a wall. She let him talk, keeping only half an ear on his words and the other ear on the alert. They had left the highway completely behind by now, plunging across the vast expanses of rock-strewn dust that lay between them and the Western Mountains. It paid well to be on the lookout in a place like this.

It rubbed against every grain in Mirayah’s body to trust this stranger and his Dragon, even if they did share a casual, accidental sort of bond. And yet, did she have much choice? The idea of striking out on her own again was a tiring one. There was something to be said about strength in numbers. Just because Aaron seemed to talk a lot without ever giving anything away, didn’t mean he was untrustworthy. She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and see what happened.

After a few days of these polite, friendly interactions, Aaron finally did give Mirayah a reason to both trust and distrust him.

Their fourth night of travel together concluded a scorching day. The Dragons didn’t seem to mind it, but the Riders were beat half to death by the heat. Waves of scalding air seemed to dance before them, distorting their view of the distant horizon. The fall of night was a welcome relief. By unspoken consent, Limok and Birul agreed to trade off watches that night and let the Riders sleep it off.

Aaron and Mirayah threw their bedrolls down next to a patch of heather and one scraggly tree; the only significant shelter for miles. Mirayah enjoyed looking at the desert with its warped rock features and beautiful, odd formations, but she decided that she hated traveling through it. There was dust in places she didn’t even know she had. She and Aaron kicked off their boots and fell into their blankets without talking, eating, or even washing up. The first thing on their minds was sleeping, while it was still cool enough to do so.

But just as she was putting her head down on the saddle, a faint, scratching hiss issued from the brush near her head. She had no idea what it was, but it sounded menacing, so she jumped as if stung. And then she was actually stung.

“Shit! What was that?!” she roared, grabbing the side of her neck. The hissing continued, until a sudden flash of reddish light punched the underbrush. When Mirayah turned around she saw Aaron was standing again, with one hand extended towards the place where the sting had come from. There was a faint, lingering red halo around his fingers. When he was sure the hissing had stopped, he fell to his knees and shoved his hand into the leaves, feeling around for the culprit. He withdrew with the carcass of a massive scorpion dangling between his thumb and forefinger. Its tail and half its abdomen was scorched, the carapace split apart like the skin on rotten fruit. Smoke and sizzled guts oozed from inside the thing’s body.

Aaron wrinkled his nose and threw the thing away, then turned to Mirayah. Her flesh was crawling and her muscles were seizing every few seconds as the poison spread downwards from her neck. She groaned between heavy breaths, trying to get a handle on the pain. It wouldn’t kill her, but it hurt like hell!

When Aaron reached out a hand to touch the wound, she flinched away. She didn’t like being touched. He murmured that he could fix it, and tried again. Once he had pried her hands away from the sting, he covered the side of her neck with his palm and squinted at it as if in deep concentration. A warm buzz crawled underneath her skin and then down through her veins, searing away the scorpion’s poison in mere seconds. She gritted her teeth at the vague discomfort of it, but then it was over. Aaron took his hand away, and when she felt over her neck the sting was completely wiped away.

She realized, with wide eyes, that he’d just performed magic. She hadn’t seen it, but she had heard and felt it. His magic had been inside of her for the briefest moment, and it felt much too personal for her taste. Still, he had only been trying to help. She was unsure what to say, so she glanced away and muttered,

“Um… thank you. That’s much better.”

He smiled and said it was no trouble at all. Then they laid back down again, and though Mirayah tried not to drop off right away, the exhaustion go to her and they were both asleep in minutes.

That night, like most nights, she dreamed.

This time she was dreaming of Galeshire. Perhaps there was just the faintest trace of scorpion poison in her, or perhaps it was just her general unease getting to her, but she couldn’t get the picture of Ulysses and Diantha out of her mind. Their masticated flesh, the massive claw-wounds that covered them from head to toe, the oozing gore, the frozen expressions of agony on their faces; they haunted her. Her head echoed with the screeching howl of demons: nothing, multiplying on nothing, multiplying on nothing, multiplying on nothing-

She nearly screamed as she was suddenly dragged into the waking world, her heart pounding. Limok, who was on watch at the moment, had roused her before the nightmare could get out of hand. For a long time Mirayah sat panting, listening hard for the awful howling she’d thought she’d heard. After her first experience with the things, she had lost the ability to ignore dreams like that. The next time she ignored a premonition could be her last, for all she knew.

But though she sat up for a long time listening, all she heard was Aaron’s sleep-thickened voice whisper-

“You okay, Mirayah?”

Evidently she had roused him. He stirred in his blankets when she didn’t reply right away, but she took a deep breath and answered before he could sit up.

“Go back to sleep,” she growled, “I’m fine. Just a dream.”

“If you say so,” Aaron yawned, and turned over. She laid back down as well, but every time she closed her eyes, the shadows on the insides of her eyelids seemed to peer back at her. Shapes formed in the darkness: shapes with teeth and claws, terrible black holes for eyes, staring into the deepest parts of her mind. So she didn’t sleep that night, and instead stayed up until dawn, waiting in tense silence for the comfort of sunlight.

…

Days later, Aaron caught himself as he began to doze in his watch. The hour was terribly early. This was the worst watch of the whole night, in his opinion, but it was his night to take it. Limok and Birul had both taken their turns, and Mirayah was next. For now she lay wrapped in her bedroll below, sandwiched between the shelter of a rock outcropping that jutted from the featureless desert, and the warm curve of Limok’s flank. The Dragons lay curled around the camp like a pair of crescents, put together to form a near-perfect circle.

If Aaron glanced upward again he could see what was left of the moon above. It had waned since he had met Mirayah at Weëba, and now the stars were the most prominent thing in the sky. It felt unusually dark to him, inky and black like a shroud. Perhaps it was just his nerves, he thought. He was predisposed to regard shadows with suspicion. This was the witching hour, after all.

By far, the worst watch of the night.

But he could tell that it was coming to an end now, by watching the slow turn of the sky and the motion of the stars. Like all DragonRiders, he had a sort of internal clock, which was letting him know that his two hours were almost up.

From his position atop the rock outcropping that formed their only shelter, he could see for miles. Low foothills and sandy banks extended outwards for miles, punctuated by patches of dusty green. The West mountains, what little of them he could see in this oppressive night, were still far off.

_“This would be so much quicker if we were flying,”_ he thought, a little regretful. Still, at least it was giving him a chance to get to know Mirayah, and to put off the inevitable return to the place he had used to call home.

His watch was wrapping up now, so he vaulted lightly from the top of the outcropping down into camp. His landed in the dust without a sound, and crept across to Mirayah’s bedroll. He hadn’t yet made a noise to rouse her, but she seemed to sense him as he drew near. She was such a light sleeper, it was a wonder she got any rest at all. By the time he had crouched down next to her she was already stirring. He waited until she sat up, arched her spine in a bone-cracking stretch, and then pulled her mane of hair back with a ribbon. She turned and made eye contact with him, then silently picked up her quarterstaff and her bow from where they lay in the dirt by her head.

Aaron sat in his own bedroll with a groan, grateful to return to it. As Mirayah was slipping her belt and shoes on, Aaron was taking his off. He set his sword within arm’s reach and then slid between his blankets, marveling at how comfortable one could get on the hard ground when one was tired and cold. Without waking, Birul stirred in his sleep and rolled to one side, exposing his underbelly. Aaron scooted over against the Dragon’s warm flank and then dragged the front sail of Birul’s wing over him like a lean-to tent. Instantly he was enveloped in a dry, airy sort of warmth created by the radiation of the Dragon’s inner fire. The desert nights were just as startlingly cold as the days were hot, and so Birul’s warmth felt nice. 

While he got comfortable, Mirayah was climbing the outcrop and settling into her own watch. Through the space between Birul’s wing and shoulder he could see her dark shape silhouetted against a square of dim sky, sitting perfectly still with her hood and cloak wrapped around her. She had pressed herself up against an irregular piece of rock to break up her outline, so even from a few feet away with the knowledge that she was there, Aaron found it hard to make her out. Once she had set herself down, she made no motion, no twitch or shifting in her seat that would give her away. She was perfectly still, just like the rock she hid against.

Over the past few nights Aaron had noticed how she did this and he thought it was an eerie, if marvelous, skill to have. She walked with a strange sort of grace, as if she floated just a quarter of an inch above the ground at all times. Her boots never made a sound in the dust, like she unconsciously selected each step to avoid twigs and rocks, like she had been sneaking for so long that she permanently walked on tiptoe. It was natural to her now, to be innocuous and unnoticed. Sometimes she would startle Aaron by appearing at his side where she hadn’t been before. After jumping in fright, he would laugh and tell her to cough or something next time, before she gave him a heart attack.  
She never did, though.

...

Whenever Mirayah kept watch, she would sink into a strange sort of trance. Her eyes would fix above on the stars or whatever features she could make out in the sky. If it was obscured she would watch the mountains beyond, but either way she would find something to gaze at through hooded eyes. Tonight there were enough stars above that she could occupy herself with staring at them for hours. But though her eyes were inattentive, her ears were pricked. She could pick out the faint whistles of the wind, the distant calling of nocturnal desert creatures, the gentle sighing of her companions breathing below her. She listened as Aaron shifted once or twice in his bedroll, then eventually dropped off into sleep. His breathing patterns slowed before long, deepening further by the minute. All these sounds she filtered through in her mind, going through them with a fine-tooth comb, separating them, analyzing them, looking for signs of danger.

She exhaled deeply after she was sure Aaron was asleep. These quiet hours of the morning were her favorite. Only now could she experience complete aloneness. It felt as if the entire rest of the world had been enchanted into a coma and she alone stood amongst them, enshrouded in pristine silence and darkness, awake and alive.

She had been so still for so long that her muscles had gone beyond cramping into complete numbness. Without making any sudden movements she stretched her limbs out one by one, slower than grass growing. She did this automatically, without needing to focus on being still. Her mind as she did this was completely elsewhere, though what she thought about in those surreal, empty hours was impossible even for her to recall. 

If she tilted her head to the side by a little, she could watch the activity that fluttered around a cluster of cacti from afar. Some of the spiked plants were tall and narrow, others were squat and grew in big wide patches. But all were blooming now in spring, when there had been the most rainfall. The plants were swollen with it, storing it, allowing it to trickle out in tiny bits through their perfumed flowers. 

Clouds of bats flitted around those flowers, tiny and delicate with their fine-boned wings and huge ears. Their motions were rapid and they changed angles in midair; quick, unpredictable, without warning. From flower to flower they darted, ducking their heads into the blossoms for a few moments to suckle the nectar. Then they moved on, sometimes to a different flower on that patch, sometimes to another place altogether, never seen again.

There was a certain vastness to this desert, Mirayah thought. The grasslands were wild and broad, but though the weather was extreme, it did include rain and snow. The desert was different. The earth here was nearly barren, and it sighed through tiny holes and patches, gasping out breaths of life to which the flora and fauna of the area flocked. It was like a huge, cobwebbed cathedral chamber in which any noise echoed, in which the vaulted ceiling was too high to fathom reaching and the floor was so wide it looked like the whole surface of the earth spread out flat before her. The West mountains in the distance were her walls, safe and shadowed, more solid than anything else, but too far away to touch, still a little out of her reach. They seemed to retreat with every step she took towards them.

The stars she was watching began to blink out one by one, like tapers being doused, as the sky lightened. She waited until the grayness was enough that she could make out shadows and shapes, and then slipped down from the outcrop. Her watch wasn’t quite over yet, but she liked to get everyone up early while it was still cool. It was absurdly hot during the days, and so they had to do most of their traveling near twilight, and rest at noon. The noises of the nocturnal creatures were fading as they receded into their burrows to hide from the sun, like smart creatures. Unfortunately, Mirayah mused, humans were not smart creatures.

She went to Limok first and gave the Dragon’s flank a shove. With a low rumbling groan Limok curled up a little tighter as if in denial of the morning.

“Up up up!” Mirayah urged, shoving the Dragon again. Limok turned her head over her shoulder and glared blearily.

_“Has no one ever told you not to wake a sleeping Dragon?”_ she grumbled. Mirayah raised one eyebrow.

“Of course. But you don’t count, you overgrown lizard.”

The Dragon snorted and spat a little flame at Mirayah. It slipped right off of the Rider’s outstretched hand like water from oil. Limok’s fire had no power to burn Mirayah. However, it was useful for getting the campfire going, and so Mirayah caught the flame in her cupped fingers like a drop of quicksilver. She had set aside a bundle of tinder the night before, and she carried the flame over to this bundle, dropping it in. It was so dry that it combusted almost instantly, and Mirayah had the fire going strong in less than a minute. Limok shook herself off and clambered to her feet while her Rider went about getting breakfast. She let Mirayah know that she was going to hunt up a little something fresh for everyone, then took to the air and glided off.

Mirayah set coffee in the pan to boil, then sauntered across camp to where Aaron and Birul still lay asleep.

“Morning,” she called. “Time to get up.”

A sleepy moan came from underneath Birul’s wing in response. Mirayah gave it ten seconds, idly observing the pattern of dark veins that spider-webbed within the membrane of Birul’s wing sails. The color of the membrane was a duller, darker color than his scales, more like bronze than gold. Limok’s was the same- like steel rather than silver.

When she heard no further motion from Aaron she sighed and called out again. This time he replied, 

“For fuck’s sake, it’s the ass-crack of dawn.”

“Yup.”

“Are you always up at this ungodly hour?”

“Yup.”

“…Is there coffee?”

“Yup.”

“Dear god woman, is that all you say?”

“Yup.”

With a chuckle Aaron threw back his blankets- Mirayah could hear him rustling around- and soon emerged from beneath his Dragon’s wing. Birul’s head pricked up as he felt his wing flex, and then he stood with a colossal shake. Dust filtered down from his flank over both Riders, but they just brushed it from their clothes absentmindedly. They were both used to being dirty at this point. It had been weeks now of cutting across the desert, and there was no escaping the omnipresent dust.

Breakfast was a rapid affair. Mirayah had set up camp and made their meal, so Aaron cleaned up the mess and put out the fire while she fetched the horses. He had a few magical tricks up his sleeves, which she loved to watch. He waved his hand over the dirty pan and the scraps of food and grease followed his hand like a magnet, slipping away from the metal and leaving it as clean as it had started. Then he flicked his fingers and the detritus fell to the ground. And when he held out a hand to the fire and gestured downward, the flames coincidentally shrank and died with a neat little fizzle. Mirayah had never seen him do anything bigger than these little conveniences, and the one healing trick with the scorpion, but she thought she would like to learn soon. Eventually she turned away from watching him and went to her own task.

In a trice she had both horses awake, tacked, and ready to go. Aaron had packed the saddlebags and so she fastened them on. Just before they mounted up, Mirayah paused to wind her scarf up and fasten her cloak, once again shrouding her face in shadow. Aaron raised one eyebrow at her. In this heat, he felt driven by the urge to take things off, not put them on. He had noticed her doing this every day and now, once they had settled into their saddles, he wondered aloud about it.

“You know we’re all alone, right?” he pointed out.

“Yes, I am acutely aware of that.”

“So… we’re both Riders. You know you don’t have to cover up around me.”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you insist on-”

“Why not? It’s comforting.”

“Comforting how?”

“I don’t bloody know, in case we get attacked my robbers? You tell me! Can we just get moving already?” Mirayah snapped irritably. Verna seemed to sense her agitation, for he tossed his  
head and pawed at the ground with a snort. Aaron put his hands up appeasingly and muttered that fine, yes, they could go. With that Mirayah gave her horse a nudge and they started towards the West mountains at a trot.

It was Aaron’s turn to navigate today, so he had a map and compass spread on his lap while Mirayah rode point. She was keeping pace with him, to his left and a little ahead of him, on the lookout for adders, pitfalls, cacti, and other such dangers. She glanced over at him every once in awhile, at his thoughtful frown, his slightly troubled gaze. He was being quiet, unlike in the past days when he talked her ear off for every waking hour. Now, aside from the occasional word of direction, he didn’t speak to her.  
By the time the sun had freed itself of the eastern horizon, Mirayah caved. She let out a long sigh, and then said-

“I apologize.”

“For what?” Aaron wondered without looking up. She knew he didn’t have to constantly keep his eyes on the map. They’d been on the right course for a while now. He was just using it as an excuse not to meet her gaze.

“For snapping at you. This morning. I can be short-tempered.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“I know. So… I apologize.”

“…It’s fine,” he said at length, giving a shrug as if it meant nothing to him.

Mirayah was quiet for awhile, but she kept glancing at him out the corner of her eye. Finally she pulled Verna to a stop in the dust, and Forsooth (from force of habit) stopped as well. Aaron raised an eyebrow and looked up at her.

“What’s the matter now?” he asked, a little too nonchalant. Now Mirayah was truly annoyed.

“Look, I know I can be abrasive,” she said, her voice acerbic, “but you just… you frustrate me!”

Aaron was winding his reins in his hands now, not exactly angry, but agitated.

“How so?”

“With your questions! You constantly try to pick me apart with the bleeding questions! You want to know my motives for everything, you want to know every detail of my past, but you give no answers in return. I still don’t know anything about magic, about what you were doing before we met, or where we’re going. And yet you expect me to be open and forthcoming with you? For fuck’s sake, I don’t even know how to mend a pot with magic, let alone do something useful! I’m completely in the dark about what being a Rider is about! Do you get now why I’m angry?!”

“It’s not my place to teach you that,” Aaron replied, with more graveness than Mirayah had thought he was capable of. She threw her hands up as if to say ‘there it is!’

“If not yours, then who’s fucking place is it? This is what I’m talking about! You know more about me than I do about you, and that puts me in a very uncomfortable position. It seems I have to trust you because of who and where we are, but I can’t help but be suspicious of someone I barely know.”

“Barely know?” Aaron exclaimed, his expression more than a little affronted. “I’ve been nothing but friendly. We’ve been traveling together for two weeks now, I thought we were getting along very well.”

Mirayah sighed and drew her hand across her face.

“But I’m still in the dark about so many things. You dodge any question of importance.”

Aaron let the reins fall back onto Forsooth’s neck. His face had softened.

“It’ll be clear in time. I’m just… I’m not good at explaining things. There’s a lot for you to learn and there’s better places to get it from than me. I promise I would never hurt Limok or you, and for now I need you to trust me and be happy with that. We need to stick together. It’s still a long and dangerous way to the Palace.”

Mirayah glanced down at her lap, where her fingers were rubbing over her wrists again. She felt like a petulant child being chastised by an elder. But another look at Aaron’s face- only sympathy and gentleness in his smile- convinced her not to push the matter further. She gave a huff.

“Fine. Let’s just keep moving.”

Before Aaron could say anything more she nudged Verna’s flank. The paint tossed his head and set off at a trot, picking his way through the desert with energy in his step. Mirayah heard Forsooth follow behind, but she didn’t bother to look back.

...

For days they continued like this, talking occasionally about unimportant things to pass the time. Mirayah tried not to be cold to him, since she knew they were stuck together for the time being. She needed him, as he seemed intent on getting her from point A to point B. Plus, Limok had very quickly grown to like Birul’s company.

With each day the mountains grew larger in the corner of their vision, a shadow migrating toward them inch by inch. The horizon’s shape morphed from a dark line to a jagged silhouette on the western horizon, and then to a towering mass. The foothills also began to rise higher from the flat desert floor, shooting up fingers of jagged rock which the four travelers often took shelter underneath. The change in the terrain was so gradual it was almost unnoticeable. 

The thing that Mirayah remembered best out of this trip, out of all the monotonous, miserable, wretchedly hot trekking, was a morning in the middle of it when they chanced upon a dried-up riverbed. It was leading in the right general direction for the moment, so the two Riders descended into it and trotted along the smooth path it presented. They rode side-by-side for a little while, enjoying the brisk morning breeze.

Verna, as usual, had an energetic step and a very economic stride. Several times a day, Mirayah found herself reining her steed in to allow Forsooth to catch up. But now, on a playful whim, she let him go. Verna tossed his head and picked up his feet, forcing Forsooth to spring into a short canter in order to catch up. Verna saw his partner start cantering and he did the same, which elicited a challenging laugh from Aaron.

“Oh-ho! Is this how we’re gonna be today?”

He gave a cluck and spurred Forsooth into a faster canter. Not one to be outdone, Verna snorted and lengthened his stride. In a trice, both horses were galloping headlong, their riders crouched low over their stretched-out necks. Mirayah’s hood and scarf were ripped down by the wind of her passage and her hair streamed out behind her like a second shadow. She held her quarterstaff out to the side to stop it from banging against Verna’s flank as the two horses strained against one another, weaving here and there in an attempt to jostle the other out of step. Neither of the competitive stallions would stand to lose. In this race, the Riders were little more than passengers.

Wedged between the banks ahead of them was the long-dead, dried-up husk of a log. Mirayah squeezed Verna with her knees and he sailed easily over the obstacle, hitting the ground on the other side without breaking his stride in the slightest. Mirayah heard Forsooth make the jump as well, however the rhythm of his hooves was slightly off for a hundred feet after. He had fallen hopelessly behind. She grinned fiercely, reveling in the feeling Verna’s legs pumping beneath, his steel-coil muscles working with each thunderous pound of his hooves in the dust.  
The riverbed was petering out and so she turned Verna’s head and urged him to jump back up onto the desert floor. Once there, she flicked the reins backward and she sat down into the saddle to signal she was done racing. Verna slowed to a canter, then from there to a few trotting steps and then a walk. He shook his mane and snorted in victory. Mirayah laughed indulgently and stroked his neck, murmuring a few words of praise into his soft ear as she waited for Aaron to catch up. 

Defeated, he allowed Forsooth to slow to a canter. In a moment or two he made it to the same point in the riverbed as she had. Forsooth scrambled up to the desert floor with Aaron, panting, still on his back. He grinned at her and she returned the gesture. The two of them were still breathing hard from exertion, their skins hot and moist with sweat.

“I know when I’m beat!” Aaron exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “Good race!”

“Good race,” she wished him back, and they clasped arms. Then, after another moment of catching her breath, Mirayah clucked at Verna and turned his head back towards the course. But before they could set off again, Aaron drew level with her and grabbed her arm to get her attention. She turned to him with one eyebrow raised, her face still flushed with triumph.

“What,” she laughed, “You want another go? Because I’m sure Verna will be happy to kick your ass again!”

“No, no,” Aaron insisted with a low chuckle and a wave of his hand. He met her gaze, his expression mild, and said, “I just wanted to tell you… you have a beautiful smile.”

Mirayah froze for a moment, but Aaron was already turning away, whistling cheerily as he went. She gave her head a shake, her face falling once again into its usual taciturn set, and then tapped Verna’s flanks so he would follow. She wasn’t sure what to make of the exchange.

...

Mirayah looked up from her map one afternoon after their third week of trekking through the desert, and seemed to realize all at once how close they had come to the West mountains. They were nearly swallowed in the mountains’ shadow, and she had to crane her neck to see the very top of the nearest peak. They presented themselves to her as a vast impenetrable wall, intimidating, impassable. Not once had she seen any kind of path leading up, or any kind of gap leading in. The sides of the cliff faces were so sheer that to scale them would require the balance of a mountain goat and the bravery of an idiot.

On this occasion she turned to her companion, who had been unusually quiet all morning, and asked-

“Aaron…”

“Hm?”

“How the hell are we supposed to get in there?”

“In where?”

“The mountains, dumbass.”

He shrugged and looked away again. She sighed at his absentmindedness. Aaron did this sometimes, when he was riding point. His eyes would be busy watching for the telltales of danger ahead, but the entire rest of his mind would be somewhere else. His pensive expression often took a dark tone to it, which always made Mirayah curious to know what he was thinking about. Usually Mirayah left him alone. But now she pushed him.

“Aaron, how are we supposed to get through? It would take weeks on foot, and surely we can’t take the horses.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“What bridge? There are none, as far as I can see. One more day and we’ll be in the mountains’ shadow, and then what? We’ll have to turn north or south and start following along their face.”

“Oh hell no, that would be so time-consuming. We’re gonna cut through, obviously.”

“Okay, but you still haven’t said _how._ ”

 

“We’ll fly. Limok is big enough by now, though we’ll have to take frequent breaks. We’ll fix your saddle up- mine’s already been modified- and leave the horses behind.”

“Leave them where?”

“Here.”

“In the desert? Without food or water for miles? Aaron, they’re not the right breed for this. They’re not equipped to survive on their own here.”

“There’s an oasis up ahead, one more day’s travel. That’s where we’ve been navigating to. We’ll leave them there and if they don’t have the good sense to stay in the area, that’s their own fault.”

Mirayah narrowed her eyes.

“How do you know there’s an oasis? It’s not marked on the map.”

“It was there two years ago.”

“Really? What were you doing around here two years ago?”

“Nothing important.”

There it was. He averted his eyes and made a show of watching the hot, shimmering waves of desert around them. She raised one eyebrow.

“That’s a lie.”

“No it’s not!”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“And you like to bicker about irrelevant things.”

“Damn right I do. I get bored otherwise. Besides, I don’t find it irrelevant.”

“You’ll know what you need to know when you need to know it, I promise.”

Mirayah bit the inside of her cheek and huffed.

“You keep saying that, and yet here we are arguing in the middle of nowhere because you can’t be forthcoming in _anything_!”

“Fuck’s sake Mirayah, can’t you keep it down a little? Sound carries here!”

At this point Limok piped up and said to Mirayah-

_“You might want to take a look at this.”_

She waved a hand as if to rid herself of a gnat buzzing at her ear.

“Not now, dearest , I’m busy.”

But when she turned to Aaron again his eyes were unfocused in the way of a Rider who was conversing with their Dragon. As she watched, he pulled Forsooth to a stop and closed his eyes. She sighed, figured that if he was going to stop talking to her, she might as well see what Limok had to say. The moment her eyelids shut, Limok swooped Mirayah’s mind up out of her body into the Dragon’s own. Through Limok’s silver-tinted gaze, she looked south. There was a moment of confusion, and then one of shock.

There was, once again just as before, a sandstorm barreling toward the pair of Riders on the ground. It had consumed the southern horizon behind them and was moving faster than the wind, its tongues of dust billowing ahead and then rolling over themselves like a host of galloping horses. The sight was so familiar, the circumstance so similar to the one just weeks before, Mirayah thought her heart was going to stop.

The two Riders snapped back into their own bodies in the same instant and looked at each other wide-eyed. Then, without a word, they yanked their horses’ heads around and dug their heels in. Verna shot into a gallop like an arrow from a bow, and Forsooth caught up moments later. The two Riders ran for miles with the Dragons in tow, circling helplessly. Birul and Limok were safer in the sky, high above the columns of hot wind, where the storm couldn’t snatch their wings out of the air. When it became obvious from their birds-eye view that the horses weren’t going to outrun it, Limok called out-

_“There, in the rocks to your left!”_

_“Take shelter!”_ Birul cried at the same time.

Mirayah and Aaron veered aside, sending gravel and dust out from underneath the horses’ hooves. They could already feel the hot air breathing down their necks. When they neared the pile of rocks and the hollow in the ground at its base, they threw themselves from their saddles. Mirayah glanced south as she pulled Verna closer to the rocks, her heart stumbling over itself. The sun was rapidly being blocked out by the wall of dust barreling down upon them.

After Mirayah had done a cursory examination for adders under the rocks, Verna fell to his knees in the sandy basin. He rolled onto his side at Mirayah’s bidding. His eyes were so wide she could see the whites, and his breath was coming fast, but he obeyed her all the same. She unwound her scarf to throw it over his face, to keep him calm.

Mirayah looked back up to check how Aaron was faring, but the air around them was already growing dim and choked. She cast about for a second and then located his dark shape just a few feet away. He was struggling with Forsooth’s head, cursing the rearing horse under his breath. She was about to get to her feet and help when the stallion broke free, turned tail, and dashed the other way in breakneck terror. Aaron shouted and ran after him. Mirayah’s stomach dropped as he fled from view. She scrambled to her feet and took a few steps out of the hollow, calling Aaron’s name between hacking coughs. The sand in the air was so thick and choking it felt like her lungs were on fire. She bent double and wheezed into the crook of her elbow, her eyes narrowed to slits to keep the sand at bay. As she straightened up she called for Aaron again, but in the orange dimness around her she could see nothing.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a shape barreled into her sideways and shoved her down into the hollow against Verna’s belly. She identified Aaron not by sight, because she couldn’t make him out, but by touch. He threw his body over her and pulled his cloak over Verna’s head and over her to shield them from the sand. Her face was pressed into the shoulder of his tunic. In fear and desperation, she threw her arms around his waist in case he took it into his head to run off again. 

There they remained for long minutes, or perhaps it was hours. There was no way to tell in the howling, screaming hell that had enveloped them. The worst of the sandstorm had hit them and it rushed over them in waves, throwing stinging sheets of sand in between the fibers of their clothes, into nooks and crannies they hadn’t even known they had. Their minds flooded with complete sensory overload, made worse by the hypersensitivity of their senses. The wind was so loud Mirayah couldn’t hear her own heartbeat, or the lungs of the man who was pressed right against her. She could barely breathe, her face was so smothered into his shirt, but if she shifted even an inch, her nostrils were assaulted by sand. So they clung to each other and to the trembling horse, and prayed.

The two of them lay shaking and coughing for what felt like an eternity. Verna shivered below them in fear, and Mirayah was running her hand over and over his neck in an attempt to keep him calm. Her head was pounding from lack of air, the the heat, and the constant battering. Aaron fared no better; perhaps he even did worse. His chest was heaving- she could feel it- and every breath he took wheezed.

By the time the wind ceased, all three were on the very edge of passing out. Half-conscious, Mirayah began to sense that the noise was falling off and the air was clearing. Aaron gave a moan and shifted, sending a shower of dust down over both Mirayah and Verna. The two Riders slowly sat up, coughing and rubbing at the corners of their eyes. Every muscle in Mirayah’s body was sore, though what from was hard to pinpoint. Verna clambered to his feet, jostling the two Riders away from him as he shook his coat out.

“Where’s… where’s Forsooth?” Mirayah croaked, her voice grating and painful. Aaron shook his head, his hands moving slowly as he brushed himself off. The pair staggered upright and asked the Dragons to look for the missing horse.

Birul located him soon enough, dusty and fearful, but intact. Forsooth had kept just a few steps ahead of the storm, without his rider’s weight to slow him down. He was a few miles north of their position. Aaron mounted up behind Mirayah and they fetched him back, exhaustion weighing on their every move. They found the horse, and the Dragons landed to lend what help they could. When the whole group was once again reunited, the Riders paused to drink. They emptied an entire water-skin between the two of them as they desperately tried to wash their insides clean. Mirayah was sure she had swallowed sand, to judge by the cramping pains in her belly.

Aaron pulled the map back out and found where they were. They hadn’t got too far off-track, and yet Mirayah received the news with no feeling of energy at all. The two made eye contact from their saddles, and then Mirayah gave a small shake of her head. By unspoken assent, they dismounted and returned to the shelter of the rocks. They would travel no further that day.


	7. Oasis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirayah is concerned about Aaron's illness, which worsens every day. Meanwhile, Birul pushes Aaron to make a rather awkward confession.

Mirayah’s whole body tensed as another bout of coughing shattered the quiet afternoon. She closed her eyes and turned her face to the sky as if in supplication, as if begging for it to stop. Even when it was over, she could relax no further.

The two horses were winding their way along the crest of a foothill, upon which a bank of sand was piled. The crest waved back and forth like the tracks of a snake. The oppressive sunlight bore down on them like a lead blanket, filling their eyes and noses and ears and the pores of their skin. The two stallions walked slow with their heads lowered, their chests occasionally heaving with the effort of breathing in the intense heat. It was spring in all the rest of Dunía, but here… here summer lived all through the year like a foul beast crouching in its lair, heaving its stinking breath over the land.

Mirayah was riding as both point and navigator now. Forsooth was simply following Verna at this point, for Aaron was barely capable of staying upright in the saddle, let alone doing anything in the way of riding.

She cringed again as he gave vent to another fit of coughing behind her. It was a terrible, dry, hacking affair that started from the bottom of his lungs and tore up through his ribs before it rattled around in his throat for a bit and then finally petered out. She could imagine the inner tissues of his lungs tearing and bleeding right now, the noise was so graphic. It filled her with fear and concern. That fear and concern was tinged with guilt, too, for she knew that if it wasn’t for her, this wouldn’t have happened to him. She couldn’t remember every detail of that sandstorm- her memory was already blocking it out, the way it often did with certain events- but she could remember him throwing himself over her, she could remember clinging to him as if for dear life. He had inflicted this upon himself in protecting her during that sandstorm, and now he was paying the price for his kindness.

“Do you want to stop again?” she called over her shoulder. She heard his canteen swish as he took a deep draught of water, the click of the cap going back on, and his half-satisfied exhalation after he swallowed.

“No. We’ve already turned one day of travel into two,” he replied in a voice that croaked. “We keep going at least until nightfall.”

Mirayah wanted to object, but they had had this conversation three times today already. He had taken one of the three breaks she’d offered and no more, and as stubborn as she was, he was her equal.

“Hey,” he called after a pause, “At least the horses are getting a break. Isn’t that right Forsooth?”

Mirayah smiled to herself and then glanced down at the map once more. She couldn’t, in conscience, stay angry at him.

It had taken them twice as long as they had expected, but by the time noon rolled around they were pressed right up against the mountains’ flank. They stopped at the apex of the day, recognizing that it was unwise to travel when the sun was highest. After feeding and watering the horses they sat down in the shade of a cacti patch, Mirayah’s old cloak spread over the ground to keep the little rocks and cactus spines from digging into their backsides. She didn’t sunburn because of her skin tone, but she obligingly spread a little oil over the tomato-red back of Aaron’s neck. He kept taking his hood up and down even though she had told him multiple times to keep it up, to keep in the shade.

“Remind me again why you can’t just magically heal yourself,” she grumbled

“I can’t cast a spell on myself, that’s not how it works.”

“You start fires from nothing and you purify our water with a snap of your fingers, but you can’t clean a little infection out of your lungs?”

“Don’t ask me. I didn’t invent magic. I just follow its rules.”

Mirayah scoffed but said nothing more on the topic. When Aaron turned away from her to give vent to another coughing fit she put a hand on his shoulder, gripping it tight to steady him. Once he’d regained his breath he waved her off and she went back to fanning herself with the folded-up map parchment.

_“If it was not so hot,”_ she said to Limok with a sigh, _“I would say today was beautiful.”_

Limok, who was circling about with Birul above their heads, concurred. It was as clear as ever, and in the lofty altitudes of the sky the temperature was much more clement. There was at least a breeze on that particular day, and it wasn’t a heady or dust-laden one. And the last water soak they’d visited that morning had been especially plentiful, which gave them a chance to sponge some of the dust out of their clothing and wipe their skin clean after the sandstorm. They felt much better.

Except, of course, for the coughing. Mirayah cringed again when Aaron sank into yet another paroxysm, and her sense of worry deepened by the minute. As annoying as he sometimes was, she had caught herself forming an attachment to him. She found his light humor was a nice contrast to her lack thereof. The thought of being alone again scared her, as much or more than the slavers, and as much or more than the demons that had once pursued her back in the grasslands.

What would she do if he worsened?

...

They reached the oasis Aaron had spoken of that evening, just as the sun was nearing the western horizon. It had long ago passed out of their sight, with the monolithic mountain faces blocking their view, but if they looked up they could see the orange-and-purple streaking of the sky. There was a blood-red glow that hinted at bad weather, but Mirayah welcomed the possibility of rain, even if it would make them miserable. The land needed the cool relief of rain, as did they.

The Dragons alit on the ground at the foot of the mountain. The oasis here was a modest thing, but it was an oasis all the same. Cradled in the crux of two cliffs, a spring welled up from some crack high above and spilled over the rock faces into a pool at the bottom. The center of it was a wide mire of mud, with various breeds of grass, cattails, and weeds springing up all over. There were even a couple of short trees, with branches and leaves and everything. A pile of huge granite slabs, like the tossed dice of a giant, lay to one side of the spring.  
Mirayah led the group to the rocks, picking their way on foot through the soggy ground. Toads leapt out of their way, screek-ing in indignation. The horses followed behind them, Forsooth tugged along by Aaron’s hand on the reins, and Verna coming along on his own. 

The paint stallion was attached to Mirayah, and she thought she would be sad to leave him behind. But he was smart, she thought, and he would remain where there was plentiful food and water. He and Forsooth would be okay alone for a while. As she untacked him and rubbed his coat down she whispered a promise into his ear, that she would come back for him someday soon. Aaron’s eyes were a little sad too as he went about his own task of grooming Forsooth. Out of the corner of his eye, Aaron saw Mirayah with her hands tangled in Verna’s mane affectionately. His ear flicked to catch what was said. The corner of his lip turned upward as he made out the words.

_“What a sentimental girl,”_ he thought. _“She likes to think she isn’t, but here she is talking to her horse.”_

As he felt another fit of coughing rise up within him he planted a hand on Forsooth’s shoulder to steady himself. Aaron felt his horse turn his head and nibble his master’s hair in concern, his warm breath sighing over the back of Aaron’s head. When the Rider was finished, he patted Forsooth’s neck with a sigh and a fond smile.

“I’ll be okay, buddy,” he murmured.

He and Mirayah took extra care that evening in brushing the horses, taking the time to comb through their manes and tails as well as to scoop the dirt and pebbles out of their hooves. They also pried the metal shoes loose, to prevent the horses from going lame if something went wrong with the shoes and the humans weren’t there to fix it. They fed them with the last of the oats, then turned them loose without hobbling them. The horses wandered off to munch the coarse grass, content to remain nearby. Aaron gave a sigh as he watched them.

“I’m sorry to leave them behind,” he told Mirayah, clearing his throat to keep his worn-out voice from cracking. Mirayah nodded.

“Me too. They’ll be okay, though. Show me how to fix my saddle?”

“Right, right.”

They turned together and went over to where their things lay in the dust. Mirayah spread her blanket out in the dirt for them to sit in, then kindled a fire off to the side. The temperature was dropping as the evening deepened. The Dragons had, up until this point, been laying on top of the rock pile and sunning themselves. Now the sun was nearly gone, and so they slunk down to the desert floor and lay down end-to-end in a loose circle around their Rider’s camp, a safe, warm wall of flesh.

Mirayah had shot a jackrabbit that day as they rode, and now she pulled it out from where it had been wrapped in oilcloth in her pack. As she was making a stew out of it, Aaron pulled Mirayah’s saddle into his lap and he started taking measurements of Limok and the saddle. He tried to ignore the fragrant scents of the spices in the stew as it filled their camp. In his mind he was hungry and it smelled delicious, but his stomach rolled over at the thought of eating. Mercifully, Mirayah seemed to understand this without being told. She spooned the broth and the fatty bits of the stew into his bowl, keeping the touch solids for herself and dividing the leftover carcass of the rabbit into two pieces for the Dragons. 

As Aaron sipped the broth he watched Limok scarf her portion of the carcass down, and then set her head down over her paws and watch intently as Birul started to do the same. The golden Dragon noticed her watching, and with his nose he nudged a few of his bones over to her. She gave him a thankful wink and then took them too. The Rider smiled fondly at the exchange.

_“She is hungrier than me,”_ Birul told Aaron by way of explanation. _“She still has growing pains. I think she will be beautiful when she gets big, yes?”_

The Rider glanced at the silver Dragon where she lay to his right, her slender body arced around the camp in the shape of a crescent. He smiled.

_“I agree. She and Mirayah both.”_

__

__

_“Mirayah is already grown, and if you ask me she is quite pleasing to the eye. Though my grasp of human beauty is minimal.”_

Now Aaron’s gaze flicked to Mirayah where she sat to his left, intent on her food. She had let her hair down and her scarf was packed away, which allowed the top part of her DragonMark to feel the evening air through the collar of her tunic. He had never seen her DragonMark in its entirety, just as she had never seen his, but he liked to steal glances at the exposed bits when he could. He thought the silver markings stood out much better on her skin tone than they would on a woman of fairer color.

_“She is unique. She defies what people think of as beauty,”_ he told Birul at length, turning his eyes back to his own food. _“But,”_ he continued, _“She has so much to learn. Compared to you and I, compared to what we’ve seen and known, she and Limok are like children.”_

__

__

_“If they are like children, I would hate to see what you think of as an adult. Surely you understand by now, Mirayah is aged beyond her years. She has experienced cruelty and human avarice beyond anything you and I can imagine. And yet here she is, still alive, still strong in her own ways. She is not bitter, nor is she hopeless. In that way I think she is wise. Maybe more mature than both of us, though we are two and three times her age.”_

Aaron sighed quietly, to himself.

_“Perhaps you’re right. I just hope she can handle what’s coming.”_

__

__

_“Have a little faith. You know what she is, what she is capable of. That kind of power is not granted to the weak. And she has Limok. Those two complete each other more than any other Bonded pair I’ve ever seen.”_

Aaron snorted and took another sip of broth, suppressing the urge to cough again.

_“You’ve only seen three DragonRiders in total, in all your life. If you count ourselves.”_

__

__

_“Well then we will ask someone who has seen more. He has greater frame of reference.”_

Aaron’s eyes immediately turned down and away, and his lips pressed themselves into a thin line.

_“I don’t want to talk about him right now.”_

_“You had better get used to the idea. You will be talking_ to _him soon enough.”_

_“God, I hope we won’t have to stick around that long."_

_“What, you think we can just drop Mirayah and Limok on the doorstep and say our job is done? You think we will be able to leave them alone with him in conscience?”_

_“It’s not like he’ll do anything horrible to them.”_

_“No, but Mirayah will need you in the coming months. And I already know Limok will need me."_

_“What do you mean by that?”_

_“Do not play dumb.”_

Aaron glanced at Limok again, his eyes following the length of her neck, the shining jet-black ridges on her spine, the gentle curl of her tail. She was nearly full-grown. A few weeks was all she needed, and he knew the time would come. Birul prompted gently,

_“You should warn Mirayah beforehand. Let her know what is coming.”_

_“Nothing’s coming. I’m not going to be unfaithful to him, even if he’s a jackass, no matter what you and Limok do together. I’m going to stay far away from Mirayah when the time comes.”_

_“Remember the last time you tried to wait it out?”_

_“…Yes.”_

_“Remember how that worked out?”_

Aaron rolled his eyes, but nodded. Birul continued in a gentler tone-

_“The word ‘unfaithful’ implies that you are in love with someone already. But the whole reason we left is because he did not want us around, and I doubt he would be upset at this point if you moved on. Do not write Mirayah off. And even if you are not sure about your feelings for her, you need to explain to her what happens when… you know.”_

_“…Mirayah may not take kindly to it.”_

_“I do not know about that. She likes you more than you think.”_

_“…It’s still not ideal.”_

_“This is not an ideal situation. There are so few Dragons left, we cannot afford to be picky. We must set preference aside in favor of a greater good.”_

_“But will Mirayah understand that?”_

_“There is only one way to find out. I will take Limok hunting for an hour or two- she is still hungry. You will have that time alone with Mirayah. I expect you to take advantage of it.”_

Aaron sighed. He was not looking forward to the conversation that was inevitably to follow. Birul heaved himself to his feet with a stretch and a gentle rumble in his chest. He invited Limok with him to fly over the mountain ridge in search of game, promising that they would be back in no more than two hours. She jumped eagerly at the opportunity. Mirayah beckoned Limok over. The silver Dragon bent her head down and Mirayah put a hand under her chin, pressing her lips to Limok’s forehead in farewell. The Dragon purred gently, then turned and launched herself into the sky in a hurricane of dust. The two hunters soon dwindled into glittering dots, and then they passed out of sight beyond the mountain peaks.

For a few minutes after their departure, the two Riders ate in silence. Aaron was busy trying to come up with a tactful way to breach such a tactless topic. When they were finished, Mirayah took his bowl and spoon to wash them in the spring. Normally he would have this task done in a few moments, but he was trying to use his magic as little as possible in order to conserve his strength. She went a few feet off, near the edge of the muddy pool, to wash the dishes. There she knelt in the dust, took off her shooting gloves, and rolled her sleeves up, bending down between the reeds as she went to work. 

Whenever her arms were bared like this, Aaron’s eyes were inevitably drawn to the dark rings of scar tissue that encircled her wrists. Her nervous tic of rubbing them hadn’t gone unnoticed. It was painfully obvious what they were from, but Aaron avoided mentioning anything that had to do with the time of Mirayah’s life before Limok. After their conversation on the first day they’d met, Mirayah had resisted all further efforts to draw out details of her years as a slave, or her childhood on Sevhara. Aaron supposed he understood that. There were parts of his own history he would rather avoid speaking of, so out of courtesy, both parties had silently agreed not to pry anymore. They left certain topics unspoken, in the dim light of denial.

Aaron thought he would rather kick any kind of hornet’s nest in her past than try to talk to her about Birul and Limok’s future. And yet, Birul had basically given him no choice. He sighed to himself once more. However, this triggered a coughing fit. He turned away until it was over, his fist gripping the blanket tight and his whole body heaving. Mirayah had halted in her work when he started, and she only resumed when she heard him start breathing again.

When he’d cleared his throat and taken a swig of water he asked Mirayah,

“…Hey, I was wondering… how old is Limok?”

She tilted her head a second, and then shrugged without turning around.

“She’s at least two months old by now.”

“Hm. Two months. She only has a few more weeks, then.”

“…Until what?”

“Until she goes into her first heat.”

Mirayah paused, her shoulders tensing up.

“…Ah. I see.”

Aaron raised one eyebrow.

“…I have a feeling you don’t.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“You won’t like it.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that I need to know, does it? Look, just pretend I’m ten and you’re giving me the ‘birds and the bees’ talk. Okay?”

Aaron rolled his eyes but assented with a grunt. She turned from her spot by the oasis with the dishes and a rag in hand, and began to polish them dry while he talked. He avoided her gaze, finding anywhere to look except her piercing grey eyes.

“So… when Limok goes into heat the first time, she’ll probably start getting irate.”

Mirayah snorted. “As if I’m not used to how that works.”

Aaron’s cheeks reddened, but after stammering a few times he plowed on.

“Um… uh, anyway… she’ll look for a nesting place, although that won’t be a problem once we get to the DragonRider Palace. And she’ll start putting out a musk, which any male Dragon in the area will be able to smell for miles.”

It was Mirayah’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “So, Birul?”

Aaron blushed again. “Well, yes. Bonded Dragons tend to breed within their own groups, and Wild Dragons tend to keep to themselves. Although, in the past years there’s been a little crossover… But yes, Birul will probably follow Limok into heat.”

Mirayah seemed to be accepting this all with a remarkably cool head. She nodded, looked back down at the dishes, and made a ‘go on’ gesture with her free hand. Aaron cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“When, uh, when she goes into heat you’ll know instantly, wherever she is. She’ll make a lot of noise to attract whoever’s around, and when Birul gets near, she’ll take to the sky and make him pursue her.”

Mirayah snorted. “Now, what’s the point of that? Attract a mate and then run away?”

Aaron rolled his eyes again. “It’s all part of a ritual, it’s as old as the race of Dragons itself. It’s called a Giving Chase. Obviously she’ll outfly him at first. She’ll pull away, dodge him, lead him through all sorts of aerial acrobatics that he won’t be able to follow. But eventually she’ll tire, and that’s when his endurance will win over.”

“And what happens when he inevitably catches her?”

By the way she looked at him, Aaron thought she was almost amused by this. He heaved a sigh.

“Right before he gets her she’ll arc upward and start climbing. He’ll keep pace with her until they get to the highest they can possibly go. This is called the Apex.”

“And when they get there?”

“They’ll face each other and breath a steady stream of flame. Their inner fires will spill out after a moment or two, and they’ll mingle in the middle. That’s the most important part- the Second Bond.”

“Lovely. Sounds like a fun time.”

Aaron looked away.

“Sure… yeah. After that they’ll descend to the nest Limok picked, and uh… spend some time together.”

Mirayah chuckled.

“Well I hope they have fun. Thank you for the heads-up.”

Aaron cleared his throat uncomfortably and shifted in his seat.

“Um… Mirayah, there’s a little more to it than that.”

She glanced back up at him, the sardonic look still gleaming in her eyes.

“What?”

His face was full of heat, which perhaps made Mirayah take him a little more seriously. She set the dishrag down in her lap and prompted,

“Aaron, what is it?”

He rubbed the back of his neck as he said,

“When, uh… when the Dragons go into frenzy, it’s… it’s a very powerful sensation. And it tends to… uh… spill over into the Riders. I’ve experienced it before, you sort of get… consumed in their desire. It controls you and you’re not really you, when it happens. You lose yourself in them, until it’s over. And it uh… it leads to… things.”

Mirayah froze in place, statuesque. A sudden pallor crept over her face. Up until that point Mirayah had been totally fine with what he was telling her. Aaron had expected her to flush red, to feel awkward and uncomfortable and maybe angry. But she now looked almost afraid.

She stammered,

“So… wha… what happens to us?”

“In better times, we wouldn’t have to have this conversation at all,” he explained as gently as possible. “In the days of the DragonRider Order, a pair of Dragons would instinctively follow the preferences of their Riders and mates would be chosen that way. But there are so few Dragons left, we uh… we can’t afford to be picky.”

Mirayah swayed where she was, her eyes closing slowly. She looked like she was going to be sick, which was upsetting to Aaron. Did she find him that repulsive?

“Are you saying we have to…”

“No no no! We don’t _have_ to do anything you don’t want to!” Aaron rushed to assure her. “It’s just… it’s easier if you give in to it. Trust me, I’ve tried to resist the urge before and it’s hellish. The desire… it can be overpowering.”

Mirayah kept her eyes closed as she said,

“But it is possible? To resist?”

“I… I suppose, yes, it’s possible. I never succeeded in doing so, but someone with more willpower might. Do… do you really want to avoid it that badly?”

Mirayah gave vent to a deep sigh. She climbed to her feet and paced around the campsite, drawing her hands over her face as if she was exhausted by the conversation. When she turned and looked at him once more she seemed to have gained more control over herself. Now her face was cold, unreadable.

“Please try to understand something,” she said.

“…Yes?”

“…I don’t… I don’t dislike you. I think by now we can count ourselves good friends. But I don’t think of you that way. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of anyone that way, really.”

Aaron stood up too and shuffled his feet, unable to stop himself from looking a little hurt.

“Could we at least try? Perhaps it would be easier, when the times come, if we just gave it a go. Clear the air, so to speak.”

She regarded him from across the campsite with something bordering on hostility. Her arms were crossed across her chest, and her reticence was obvious. But she didn’t retreat when he came near, nor did she flinch when he very gently put a hand on her arm. He fancied that there was even a tiny motion, a barely perceptible lean towards him. She sighed and then tossed her hair over her shoulder, tilting her head. 

“Give it a try, then,” she said, her voice soft and suppressed. Haltingly, Aaron bent down and pressed his closed lips over hers. She closed her eyes and allowed him to. Nor did she prevent him from slowly putting his arms around her, pressing their warm bodies up against one another. But there was nothing, no response. She was still as a piece of stone, and just as cold.

There was a slight sinking of disappointment in Aaron’s chest when he realized. But he held on just a bit longer than perhaps he needed, to make that moment last.

Then, without warning, he felt her jerk out of his arms and she slapped him hard across the face.

With a cry of surprise Aaron reeled away, his hand flying to his stinging cheek. He worked his jaw back and forth to make sure she hadn’t actually injured him. There was no damage, but it hurt like the very devil. He hissed in pain and then turned on Mirayah.

“What the fuck was _that_ for?!” he cried. Her expression was mortified, as if she herself couldn’t believe what she had done. She took a few steps back, folding her arms across her chest to hide her trembling hands. She looked down at her feet.

“I… I don’t know, I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to,” she stammered. He gave her another glare, narrowing his eyes.

“What is that supposed to mean, ‘didn’t mean to’? You deliberately slapped me! For fuck’s sake Mirayah, if you didn’t want me to do that you should have just said _no_!”

She took another step away, her voice trembling. “I… I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know why I… I was fine for a second and then all of a sudden I…”

The girl trailed off, pressing her hands to her temples and sqeezing her eyes shut as if her head had started hurting. Aaron felt a brief flicker of concern for her, thinking perhaps he had triggered something in her that was best left untouched. But then his jaw started stinging again and the sympathy drained from his mind. With one hand on his cheek he turned away and went back to where his bedroll lay, muttering to himself about the fickle nature of women. He resumed working on the saddle modifications that he’d started earlier, and Mirayah went back to cleaning up after supper, her cheeks flaming red and her eyes downcast.

…

The two didn’t speak even after the Dragons returned with their bellies full. Limok and Birul had each brought down a deer in a nearby valley. They seemed to know right off that something had happened, for they exchanged concerned glances upon landing and then went straight to their respective Riders at opposite ends of the camp.

Birul laid down on his side next to Aaron with a huff, looking down with his wedge-shaped head tilted to the side.

_“I take it things did not go well?”_

Aaron drew a hand over his sore cheek and then shook his head.

_“No. I think when the time comes, she and I should be far away from each other.”_

Meanwhile, Limok slunk over to the opposite side of camp where her Rider was sitting with her blankets thrown over her lap and her knees drawn up to her chest, examining the map with troubled eyes.

_“What happened?”_

Mirayah sighed. 

Mirayah felt Limok dive into her mind and examine her recent memory. When Limok was done, she bent her head down and pressed her nose against the girl’s side comfortingly.

_“Oh, Mirayah. My love.”_

The Rider felt like she was going to cry. She drew the back of her hand over her eyes and thus suppressed the urge. She reached over and wrapped her arms around Limok’s neck, inviting the Dragon to lay down next to her. Her whole head fit in Mirayah’s lap while the girl leaned over and rested her cheek against her Dragon’s shoulder.

_“Remember when you were so little, I could fit your entire body in one arm?”_ she said.

Limok snorted, blowing a little puff of smoke into the air around them. _“I remember.”_

_“How the roles have reversed.”_

_“You protected me when I was tiny and helpless. Now it is my turn to return the favor.”_

_“I’m not actually helpless, though. You know that.”_

_“I know. You only need me sometimes.”_

Mirayah shook her head and tightened her grip on the Dragon. 

_“No! Always. I’ll need you always.”_

_“… Even when my instincts cause you pain, and get between you and your friend?”_

_“Even then. I’ll get over that. I couldn’t get over losing you.”_

…

The night turned especially chilly and before long Mirayah noticed, even from across camp, that Aaron was shuddering. Birul had his Rider folded between his front legs and still Aaron was shivering, wrapped in every blanket he had. His teeth clenched with each paroxysm, and it worsened when he coughed. Eventually Mirayah sighed, set her pride aside, and walked over to him. He looked up as she approached, his face guarded.

“What do you want?”

Without answering she knelt down next to him and reached across Birul’s leg toward him. He flinched away, but Birul rumbled quietly to let Aaron know that he was being silly. The Rider sighed and then allowed the girl to touch him. She laid her fingers on his neck, and then brushed the tips of them over his forehead, flicking shaggy blonde bangs out of the way. He wouldn’t look her in the eye, but he accepted her ministrations.

“You’re hot.”

Aaron snorted. “Glad you think so.”

Mirayah rolled her eyes in exasperation.

“I don’t mean… you know what I mean, you ass. You’ve got a fever.”

“Lovely. That would explain the chills.”

“…All we can do is wait it out. You only get fevers when there’s something in your body to kill, so let’s let it do its job.”

“Must be some hell of a bug. Riders don’t get sick unless it’s bad.”

Mirayah’s heart leapt to her mouth.

“Does… does that mean you’re in danger?”

He shrugged, though the way he looked down at his lap made her doubt it when he said,

“Not likely. I’ll be fine in a little while.”

Mirayah paused and looked at him searchingly for a few moments. But then, with a sigh, she capitulated.

“… If you say so. Is there anything I can do to help?”

He finally looked up again, and a tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he recognized a peace offering.

“Take my watch?”

She returned the ghostly smile. “Of course.”

“And while you’re at it, move your stuff back over here and lend me your cloak. It’s freezing.”

Mirayah nodded and climbed back to her feet. She fetched her bedroll back closer to the fire. Limok had first watch, Birul had the second, and then Mirayah had both of the early morning ones. As the Riders settled in for the night, Limok took to the air and drifted up to a little cleft in the mountain face nearby. It was just wide enough for her to lay on her stomach with her claws hanging over the edge. She could see for miles from up there.

Birul turned so his flank was facing the rock pile against which their camp took shelter. In the closed space Mirayah shifted over so that her bedroll was right next to Aaron’s, with him sandwiched between her and the Dragon. They slept on their sides, with their backs facing each other and the curves of their spines just barely touching. Birul extended a wing over them both, instantly enfolding them in warm darkness. When it was his turn for watch, Limok would replace him and do the same.

The girl could still feel Aaron shivering. She knew she would be listening to him in her sleep, but there was at least some security in knowing she was there to keep an eye on him. By insisting in her own mind that he would be okay, she eventually lulled herself to sleep.


	8. The Null

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Basically, shit goes south real fast. Enjoy the last chapter of the teaser!

Mirayah suddenly found herself awake in the middle of the night. She opened her eyes and glanced around, but nothing had changed, except that Birul had taken his place at watch. Now the tent above her was steel grey rather than bronze. Limok was deep asleep, as was Aaron.

She sat up in her bedroll and turned to look at him. His chest rose and fell slowly, with a little wheeze right at the end of each breath. She sighed and put her hand on his neck, feeling for his temperature and pulse lightly, so not to wake him. She didn’t know why she expected some sort of improvement in the hours that had passed, but she was still disappointed when it didn’t present itself.

Even after she had made sure Aaron was okay, some nagging instinct drove her to find out what had prompted her awake. She threw her blankets back, slipped her boots on, tucked her trouser legs into them, and strapped on her belt knife. Gently, she lifted Limok’s wingtip and slipped out from underneath it, setting it back down on the ground. Her bow and quiver lay off to the side with her pack, and on an impulse she fetched them. She hooked her quiver onto her belt and slung the bow over her shoulder.

When this was done she turned in a circle, her eyes piercing the moonlit night. There was nothing she could see that was off, at least, not nearby.

Above her on the mountain cleft she caught a flash of motion, a muted hint of gold. She turned and made her way to the cliff, picking her way across the oasis pool between swatches of grass and puddles of mud. The horses were standing off by the other side of the oasis, quietly munching grass, half-asleep. Verna’s ears pricked when she came near and he looked up expectantly. With a wave of her hand and a murmur she assured him that no, she wasn’t coming for him. He returned to what he’d been doing, huffing quietly into the dust. 

One face of the mountain was covered in moss and algae from the trickling water of the spring, but the other face was dry. Finding the side of the rock that wasn’t slippery, Mirayah dug her fingers into the little hand-holds that weather had worn in the stone. She began to climb. Every once in awhile she surprised herself with her own strength, her own flexibility and agility. Once during the climb she stopped, took one hand and one foot out from their holds, and then slowly edged her other foot free so she was hanging from the fingertips of one hand. She hung there for a few moments with the knowledge that if she let go or slipped, she would fall straight down. But her hand didn’t even tremble. Her entire body was relaxed; it was easy for her.

A minute or two later she heaved herself over the edge and found herself standing on the narrow ledge where the Dragons had been keeping watch. Birul turned his head over his shoulder and invited her closer with his glittering eyes. She stepped up to the edge and looked out over the wide, blank canvas of the desert below.

Birul startled her by speaking directly to her, which he had never done until then. His voice in her head was deep and powerful, like Aaron’s voice magnified through a huge cavern.

_“What brings you here?”_ he asked as she sat down next to him with her legs hanging over the edge.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

_“What woke you?”_

“I'm… not sure. I just feel…”

_“Uneasy?”_

“Yes. How did you know?”

_“Your mind is troubled, little one.”_

She sighed. “Well that’s not uncommon. Anything interesting up here?”

_“Not particularly.”_

“Hm. At least it’s a lovely night.”

_“That it is.”_

The two gazed around for a few minutes in companionable silence. Eventually Mirayah’s eyes fell to the distant horizon, blank and thoughtful.

The first flash of motion, as a result, went wholly unnoticed. The second teased her attention, and the third captured it. Her head swiveled and her eyes narrowed as she followed it, struggling to pinpoint what it was that moved below. The figures, whatever they were, moved so silently they might not have been there. They slid from shadow to shadow, which made it next to impossible for Mirayah to figure out what exactly she was looking at. There was something horribly familiar about the way they moved, something that stirred in her memory. She tried as hard as she could to recall where she’d seen something like this before, for though she couldn’t place it, the heavy feeling in her gut made her think it must be important.

Birul had noticed the flashes of motion as well and his eyes narrowed, his head pricking. He clambered to his feet, crouching on all fours.

An instant before Birul realized, Mirayah finally grasped the memory that she had been searching for. She stood bolt upright, her eyes wide, and shouted-

“Shit, we’ve gotta move! Get up!”

Birul exploded into action, galvanized by her sudden shout. He shoved his nose underneath her and wriggled her into the seat between his shoulder-blades, not even waiting to make sure she had a firm hold. In an instant his wings snapped open and he leapt from the ledge into the air, which made Mirayah squeal and scramble for a grip. He swooped low near the campsite and tilted to the side, unceremoniously dumping her in the dust without actually landing to let her off his back. She tucked her shoulder and rolled to break her fall, coming up on her feet. 

As she watched, the golden Dragon climbed back up into the sky and surged out to meet the threat. A blood-curdling howl split the night and all at once the stars in the eastern sky were blocked out by a massive, seething darkness. Shapes the size of mountain lions loped towards them between cacti and rocks, their feet falling silent and their horrible eyes glaring through the moonlight. Mirayah’s heart nearly stopped at the familiar sight.

Birul let out a fearsome roar and spilled a cascade of red-and-gold-tinged flame from his maw. The shadow-demons’ screaming cries rose to meet him. Mirayah had to tear her eyes away from the raging battle in the desert beyond. She knew without being told that they had to flee into the mountain, and they had to do so now.

“Limok! Aaron! We need to go, they’ve found us!”

Limok pulled her head upright and looked about blearily.

_“Wha… who? Oh no!”_

The silver Dragon leapt upright, which threw Aaron rudely out of his sleep. He rolled over once in his bedroll with a cry of surprise, then sat up and rubbed his eyes. A fit of coughing seized him instantly, but Mirayah didn’t wait for him to recover. She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him upright.

“Help me pack, we need to leave now!” she told him, shaking him once. When he looked back up he was still confused, but the absolute terror in her eyes seemed to shock him awake. He glanced out to where Birul was still deeply tangled in battle, then back at her, and all at once seemed to understand. The two Riders simultaneously turned to the remnants of their camp and started shoving things into the saddlebags. Panic lent speed to their limbs, and it was less than two minutes before they’d strapped everything together. Limok’s saddle was mostly finished, and so after Aaron had tied a few final bits together with lengths of cord, he threw it over the Dragon’s shoulders and cinched it tight with Mirayah’s help. She had to finish the job because the exertion dragged him down into another fit of coughing. She bent to help him, but he waved her off, giving her a shove towards Limok. Between coughs he shouted,

“Go! Send Birul back for me!”

She didn’t have time to argue. She vaulted into the saddle, settling down into the seat and hooking her feet in the straps. There was no time for her to appreciate how it felt to ride with Limok for the first time, because the instant the Dragon felt that her Rider was secure, she leapt to her feet. Mirayah yelped as she felt the muscles heave beneath her. Limok took two leaping bounds, and within an instant she was in the air.

Mirayah leaned down to clutch around the width of Limok’s neck, holding on as if for dear life. The ground fell away as the Dragon climbed, her wings beating the air with a heavy whump, whump, whump noise. She wheeled left until she faced the roiling mass of fog that confronted them, then paused mid-air. Mirayah had approximately half a second to appreciate the beauty of the huge vault of the sky that had opened up above her. Then the wings on either side of her half-folded. There was a sickeningly slow forward tilt as Limok stooped into a dive. The wind snatched the scream right out of Mirayah’s mouth as they plunged down towards the earth head-first.

Just before they plowed into the ground, Limok’s wings edged open again and snapped them out of the dive so quickly Mirayah thought she’d left her stomach behind. Birul swooped around them with fire spilling from his maw, chasing one of the shadow-demons back away from camp. Limok turned and followed him. A puff of smoke issued from her nostrils, and then all of a sudden she was flaming, spreading a sheet of blue-and-silver-tinged fire over the seething mass below. The demons fled from the light, screaming in fury and something akin to pain. One of the creatures was struck full in the face, and it vaporized instantly like mist before the sun.

When Birul was sure that they weren’t going to overwhelm Limok, he turned and sped back to camp to fetch Aaron and all of their things.

_“Hold on tight!”_ Limok told Mirayah. _“This time they are going to get what is coming to them!”_

The girl grinned fiercely. Limok arced upward again, sucked in a deep breath, and then turned back with a savage roar. Claws extended and mouth open, she fell upon the creatures with her mouth aflame. They scattered underneath her, darting side to side and snapping at her with their ghostly teeth. They moved faster than the eye could follow, but Limok had eyes in the back of her head now. Mirayah had her bow out and she was lighting the ends of her arrows with the Dragonfire, grimly loosing shot after well-aimed shot. Every time one of the demons came near, Mirayah shouted out a warning and Limok burnt it away without hesitation.

This continued for long minutes that felt like hours. The girl’s heart raced, and even though her hands trembled a little, her mind was as clear and focused as crystal. They held their ground and took no more than a few scratches each until Birul and Aaron soared back into sight. Side-by-side, the Dragons beat the things back with their buffeting wings and hot breath. The desert around them glowed with flame and seethed with the creeping, darting shadows that leapt at them in turns, still trying to pierce their defenses. Birul roared aloud in agony when one of them leapt up and sank its teeth into the end of his tail, but an instant later Aaron skewered the thing with his sword and it fell to pieces, dissolving into thin air. Mirayah had never seen him draw the sword before, but she realized with a start that it was glowing faintly gold.

The moment he was free, Birul pumped his wings and disengaged from the howling creature below. Limok followed close behind, and though the shadow-demons screamed their rage at losing their quarry, the DragonRiders were disappearing into the sky.

…

Mirayah wished that she would have been able to enjoy her first-ever flight with Limok. She wished she wasn’t glancing over her shoulder or constantly reaching out to Aaron, her heart still racing with fear. She wished her head wasn’t pounding with leftover adrenaline, that she could look at the mountains flashing by around her without searching for the telltale signs of pursuit. She wished that she could at least sleep. But she had to keep her head up for now, keep alert, keep wary. There was still the risk that the creatures, whatever they were, would follow them.

As the Dragons glided rapidly between the jagged, darkened peaks, Mirayah felt Birul reach out to her again, his voice echoing across the mental void between them. But he didn’t speak to her directly- instead it was Aaron’s voice that she heard, distant and soft. The other Rider was speaking to her through his Dragon. If she focused she could make his words out.

_“Have you seen that before? You looked and acted like you’ve had experiences with it.”_

_“Yes,”_ she replied, turning her head and meeting his gaze across the gap. The Dragons were flying almost wingtip to wingtip. He lay with his head resting against Birul’s neck and his arms gathered underneath him, wrapping his blankets and his cloak around his shivering body. The saddlebags were piled around him. Mirayah noticed that he had taken the extra precaution of looping a few cords around his legs, as if he was afraid he might fall unconscious and slip from the saddle.

_“When?”_ he asked silently, mouthing the words so she could see as well as hear.

_“Just a few days after Limok and I Bonded,”_ she replied. _“They chased us into a town and then… later on, they… they wiped it out. We barely got out alive. Do you know what they are?”_

He nodded.

_“All of those creatures are part of one body. It’s called the Null. It’s not my place to explain its whole existence to you, but I’ll suffice to say that it is the mortal enemy of Dragonkind. I’m surprised it found us so fast… I was hoping we would have more time.”_

He gave another shudder and turned his head away to cough again. Mirayah flinched. Even though their link was distant, indirect, and weak, Mirayah could feel the ripples of his pain as they spread outward to her.

She was mystified by his cryptic remark, but she could see even from here that there was a peaked redness in his face. His fever was worsening. Though her curiosity burned, she recognized that he was in no state to answer her billion and one questions. She let him be for now, and she wasn’t surprised when he dropped off to sleep shortly after that.

…

After that, Aaron’s days and nights were hopelessly blurred. He dozed most of the time- or rather, slipped in and out of consciousness. He didn’t do much real sleeping. The whole time, he was distantly aware of what was happening. He could hear the wind whistling through Birul’s wings, he could feel the rhythmic pumping of the Dragon’s muscles below him when they climbed. Occasionally his eyes would flutter open and he would catch glimpses of jagged stone peaks and feathery evergreens going by. He could sense the quality of the air around him, how cold or hot it was, how high up in the atmosphere they were. They stayed at low altitudes for now, so that Aaron could breathe better.

But there was a filter around all of these sensations that warped his reality beyond all recognition. Everything he perceived was through a hellish haze of discomfort and exhaustion. From time to time Aaron’s chest would convulse and he would wake up enough to grab the saddle pommel and cough. Sometimes tears would accidentally leak down his cold, dusty cheeks as he coughed. His lungs felt like they were smoldering inside of him, and each fit left him shaking. Birul would gently remind him to drink something after each one, and after obeying Aaron would lean forward against the Dragon’s neck once more.

Birul flew a bit lower than Limok- Aaron could tell because her shadow would pass over them occasionally. The two Dragons glided most of the time, swooping in wide arcs around the mountain peaks rather than going over them. This ensured that the two Riders could keep warm, and breathe properly. Every once in a while, Aaron would get jostled awake as Birul flapped his enormous wings, sweeping them through the air like giant oars. They maintained a relatively constant altitude this way.

During the minutes when Aaron was closer to awakeness, he could hear the others’ chatter through his link with Birul. Mirayah spoke to Limok, who spoke to Birul, whose mind Aaron was tuned to. In this way he caught distant echoes of all their thoughts, swimming in and out of clarity. From what he could tell, Mirayah was sitting up in Limok’s saddle, holding the flapping parchment of the map against her thigh. She helped the Dragons navigate the mountain range, keeping them on the right track toward the Palace. Limok flew point, and Birul followed, splitting his attention between keeping up with them and tending to his Rider. Birul knew his way around most of the Western mountains, but he didn’t have the time or attention to navigate, nor were these particular parts familiar to him. Occasionally Aaron fed them tips about navigating, though sometimes they were so fever-muddled they were useless. He had such a hard time focusing on any one thing at a time, he soon gave up on this. He trusted Mirayah would get them there soon enough.

Aaron could sense, like a distant murmur, that Mirayah was worried for him. This translated into Limok being worried for him, which he heard in Birul’s thoughts whenever the silver Dragon spoke to the golden one. Aaron hated to be such a nuisance, but though he rested through all hours of the day he couldn’t seem to recover his strength. He hadn’t felt this sick in all his years of being a Rider, and the weakness in his limbs was concerning. Riders weren’t supposed to feel this way. Riders were supposed to be strong, and impervious to common maladies. He must have been in worse condition than he’d thought.

The four of them traveled from before the crack of dawn to long after the sun had set. Every night the Dragons would find a rock ledge or cave to land on for a few hours. Mirayah would tumble from the saddle exhausted, running her hands over her aching thighs to get the feeling back in them. She would rub her tired grey eyes, stand back up, and then grab Birul’s saddlebags and set up camp while the Dragons napped. Aaron would continue sleeping in the saddle while she worked, distantly feeling bad that he wasn’t helping, but still unable to rouse himself.

If there was a cave, she would collect firewood from the patchy vegetation that climbed the sides of the mountains. She would make a fire inside, then spread out their bedrolls. If there wasn’t any shelter already present, she would first make a shelter using her own blanket. Aaron would offer help and protest his state of invalidity, but it went ignored. She refused to let him exert himself. The deep, abiding ache in his limbs discouraged him from insisting further. With Mirayah’s help he would make the endless journey from the saddle to the blankets, and fall into them with the gratitude born of fatigue. The saddles would come off. The two Dragons would shake and scratch themselves, happy to have relief from the pinching things.   
Dozing aimlessly, Aaron would watch as Mirayah and Limok attempted to get food together. Limok and Birul spent hours each day hunting, not only in an attempt to quell her growing pains, but to feed everyone else. Mirayah took the fruits of their labor and somehow turned it into food. Aaron got the broth and whatever bread they had left, Mirayah got the meat and the last of the dried fruit, and the Dragons got the rest of whatever carcasses they’d found.

After eating, the other three would set up watches, usually with Mirayah first, Limok second, and Birul third. Birul would curl himself protectively around Limok and his Rider, insulating the heat of the fire. Aaron would sleep up against his belly with his wing stretched over him, and still be cold because of the fever chills. Birul tried his best to make sure Aaron slept during the night. At times it worked, and at other times it didn’t. It was touch-and-go.

Aaron wasn’t very observant during the journey, and that pained him because he knew the terrain around him was beautiful. He wanted more than anything to marvel at the wonders around them, at the cloud- shrouded peaks and the depths of the dark forests below. He wanted to watch the fog pour over the ridges like a shower of quicksilver, he wanted to witness the rugged beauty of a land untouched. He wanted to look for signs of their return to the DragonRider Palace, from which he had been absent for what felt like an eon. He wanted to watch Mirayah’s wondering face, he wanted to tell her all about the fantastic place where they were headed. But he couldn’t find the strength to keep his eyes open long enough.

He counted four nightly stops, and then things got really bad. They ran out of the flour, dried fruit, and the other travel rations that they’d bought at Weëba, which left them with no food except what the Dragons could hunt down. Aaron didn’t particularly care because he had no appetite, but he could see the haunted look in Mirayah’s eyes. She was getting desperate to find that Palace. It was well-hidden and difficult to locate based on the ambiguous features of that map. Flying in circles looking for it was hard on her nerves. She was convinced they should have found it by now. Aaron didn’t clearly recognize where they were, or where they ought to go from there. All he got were vague snatches and speculations.

_“Maybe it’s that way? No wait, I think that’s where the waterfall is. None of it’s marked on the map, of course… nobody but us have been in here for ages…”_

He felt useless.

…

On the morning of their fifth day flying, Aaron tried to wake up and encountered a little trouble. He knew he was awake, and yet there was a surreal quality to it, as if his mind was conscious but his flesh was not. There was a certain odd separation there, like he had been disembodied and now he floated near the ceiling of the shallow cave where they’d made their camp, watching. Mirayah reached over to him as the night sky began to show the first hints of grey. Birul was dozing at watch, but that was to be expected at this hour. Mirayah’s bedroll was just next to Aaron’s near Limok, so she could keep an eye on her companion through the night.

“C’mon. Morning,” she groaned, sounding just as immensely tired as Aaron felt. Her hand fell on his arm and she gave him a gentle shake. He moaned and tried to answer- He really was trying- but his limbs wouldn’t respond to him when he commanded them. His lips were numb, and his fingers had pins and needles in them. Mirayah sat up and yawned, giving a bone-cracking stretch. There was exhaustion in her every move. She had slept, yes, but she needed to sleep a great deal more before she was revived. She turned and looked at the other Rider again, slightly annoyed.

“Aaron. Get up, dammit,” she commanded, giving him another shake. He moaned again and tried to do as she asked, but there was nothing left in him. He was numb from head to toe and he felt as if there was a massive weight on his chest, like some invisible demon sitting on him, pressing him into the floor. Mirayah shook him hard, and then called out to Birul. The Dragon sat up with a start. He reached out to Aaron’s mind trying to rouse him, but even Birul’s poking and prodding couldn’t motivate him to move. Birul padded across the cave floor and sniffed at the Rider with his nose, nudging insistently. He made a distressed murmuring sound in his throat.

_“Wake up, Aaron. Please. I will help you- just wake up.”_

He felt a flood of energy flush his whole body as Birul channeled himself into his Rider. By now Mirayah had dribbled frigid water from their canteens onto the corner of her scarf and she was mopping his face with it, trying to shock him awake. But the cloth was the same temperature as the outside of his skin, so it was like wiping cold water over ice in an attempt to melt it.  
Birul puffed smoke around the Rider, because he couldn’t donate any more of his own strength without compromising his ability to fly for the day. Finally Mirayah dropped the scarf and pressed her hands to his throat to find his pulse. When she discovered it there, it was weak and inconsistent. She held the back of her hand over his mouth to feel for moisture, for warmth, for air moving- for anything. Her eyes widened in terror and she cried-

“I… I don’t think he’s breathing!”

She shoved Birul’s nose away and whipped the covers back off of Aaron. He gave a shiver but couldn’t do more than flutter his eyes halfway open and closed again. He felt her hands tilt his head back and prop his mouth open, her fingers resting under his chin against his throat. She bent over him, took a breath, and then pressed her lips over his in a tight seal and exhaled into his mouth. Aaron had heard of this. He had heard of healers using this, that it was called the Kiss of Life.

She was breathing for him.

She blew everything from her lungs into his, then inhaled as deeply as she could as if she was trying to fill herself to the brim. She did it again and again and again in an effort to get him to wake. This continued for more than two minutes. Mirayah’s hands were shaking and her voice cracked.

“C’mon, Aaron,” she was murmuring. “Don’t do this. Don’t do this to Birul, don’t do this to me. You gotta wake up.”

Finally, he felt the pins and needles receding from his fingers. The pressure was gone from his chest, and he felt himself coming back into his body. He turned his head and then, of his own volition, took a deep, shuddering breath. Mirayah took her fingers from underneath his chin and laid one hand on his cheek, looking urgently to see if he was waking up. She bent down again, her lips hovering above his in preparation to take another breath. But this time when he commanded himself to move, his limbs obeyed. He put one hand against her chest to stop her, and opened his eyes. Their gazes met, and there were tears of relief hanging off her eyelashes. He cocked a smile.

“I… I think I’m okay now,” Aaron rasped quietly. She sat back on her haunches and wiped her face dry before the tears were ever shed, then dragged the back of her hand across her mouth as if trying to get rid of the taste of him. He sat up too, then leaned over his knees and threw his arm across his face as he felt a coughing fit come on. It lasted about thirty seconds, and when he was done he was trembling from head to toe. But even the pain was better than that terrifying numbness. When he looked back up Mirayah was still kneeling next to him, only now she was holding out a canteen. He took it and drank long and deep. As he handed it back, Mirayah shot Aaron a look that he couldn’t quite interpret- something caught between terrified and angry and sad and alone.

“You scared me,” she stated.

He replied at length, “I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

She sighed and looked down at her hands. “Yeah, I know.”

He opened his mouth to say something- anything- but before he got the chance she climbed to her feet and went to put out the fire. As if nothing had happened. Aaron looked after her forlornly.

_“Go. Speak your mind,”_ said Birul. He put his snout against Aaron’s shoulder blades and nudged him out of the blankets. He put his hands on the great wedge of a head, and the Dragon helped him clamber to his feet. Then Birul gave the Rider a shove with his nose.

_“What am I supposed to say?”_ he wondered as he edged toward her. She was facing the back of the cave, shoving their things back into saddlebags.

_“She saved your life. Thank her.”_

Aaron touched her on the shoulder, lightly. She didn’t turn around as she growled,

“What.”

“I, uh… I just wanted to thank you. For what you did.”

“You’re welcome. Now go mount up.”

“No, Mirayah, I’m serious. Please look at me.”

She sighed and turned to meet his eye.

“Thank you.”

Before she could say something snarky in return, he took a step forward and folded her stiff body in his arms. There was a pause in which she resisted, but eventually the tension drained out of her and she allowed herself to be held.

“It’s going to be okay,” he told her.

“I’m going to find that Palace, today. I’m going to get you help,” she said, more as a reassurance to herself than to him.

“I know you will.”

With that he let her go, and went to saddle up his Dragon.

…

Once again, Aaron passed the day dozing in the saddle, his head resting against Birul’s neck and his arms folded beneath him with his blanket and cloak clutched in his hands. Mirayah noticed he was shivering again. Birul flew so low he had to swerve from side to side to avoid treetops and rock spurs, in an effort to protect Aaron from the frigid upper temperatures of the atmosphere. At least it was nice to be away from the grating harshness of the desert, Mirayah reflected. Spring foliage spread out in a lush green carpet below them, hanging off of sheer cliff faces, leaving bare spots in the soil where shards of folded rock stuck up from the ground, and climbing up to the very edge of the tree line. Between each set of ridges and peaks lay deep valleys the color of emeralds.

Aaron could sense Mirayah’s frustration as they went aimlessly from side to side, sweeping here and there in an attempt to locate the elusive Palace. Unlike the past few days, the sun was hiding beneath a thick layer of foggy cloud now. Vapor clung to the shoulders of the taller peaks and streamed into the valleys, obscuring the world around them and making it difficult to see landmarks. Aaron could feel the girl’s eyes flick to him every once in a while, concern weighing on her gaze. The fluttering map was turned this way and that, held to the light, and even looked at upside-down. Eventually Mirayah give a screaming cry:

“I have no fucking _clue_ where we are!”

_“We’re close to home,”_ Aaron thought, _“I know it.”_

Mirayah asked Birul if he’d been here before, and the Dragon said yes. But when she asked if he recognized anything around them, if he knew the way, he could do nothing but shake his head. It had been awhile, and the landscape had changed somewhat. He couldn’t be sure.

They continued all through the day, fatigue weighing their eyes down. Even the Dragons were sleepy and hungry, though they needed less food and rest than the Riders did. Mirayah and Aaron’s superhuman strength had brought them far when a regular person would have dropped from exhaustion days ago, but even they had their limits. They had to find the Palace soon.  
They paused halfway through the day, because Aaron needed to do the necessary. He was drinking as much water as he could stomach, to soothe his throat and combat the fever. Birul set down on a steep mountainside because it was the only clear space, then slid the rest of the way into the valley on the shale, his claws scraping in the loose stones. Limok followed suit. Once they were in the trees Mirayah hopped down and reached up to help Aaron out of the saddle. They locked arms and he slid on unsteady feet to the ground. After murmuring a brief thank-you he turned and walked off into the woods, using the boles of pine trees for support. The evergreens up here were interspersed with oak and maple, and stands of aspen. Their leaves shuffled softly beneath his feet, filling the air with the pleasant scent of tree bark and moss.

Aaron hated being sick- his whole body ached when he moved and though he felt freezing cold, the fever was making him sweat. It had been decades since he felt this horrid. He finished his business and then returned to where the Dragons were sitting and resting, stretching their wings between the tree branches where they could. Limok was absentmindedly rubbing her flank against a trunk to relieve an itch she couldn’t reach. 

Mirayah was nowhere to be found, and Aaron concluded that she must be doing the same thing he had, somewhere else. He waited patiently, leaning against Birul’s haunch with his legs crossed at the ankles and his arms folded across his chest. She returned in a minute or two and came right up to him, putting her fingers to his throat to feel his temperature. She frowned and laid the back of her hand over his forehead. He bent his head gently to her ministrations.

“I think your fever’s gotten worse,” she told him with concern.

“How is that possible?” he muttered, “I feel like I just came out of an ice bath.”

“An ice bath is exactly what you need. But I have an idea. Birul?”

The Dragon turned his head around and peered at her over his shoulder. Mirayah’s eyes glossed over for a moment as she spoke to the Dragon. Aaron’s eyes widened as he sensed their plan in Birul’s thoughts.

“Oh _hell_ , no! No no no no no!” he cried. But Birul had agreed to it, and Mirayah was already bundling the other Rider up into the saddle. He reached for his blanket with a groan, resigning himself to his terrible fate, but Mirayah leapt up and snatched it out of his hands. Before he could tell her to give it back, Birul lurched underneath him and sprang out from between the trees. He launched himself into the air and climbed up past the canopy with Limok close behind. Up and up they went, plunging into the low-hanging clouds for a few seconds. When they came out their clothes and hair were soaked in tiny droplets of dew.

The second they broke free of the cloud cover and found themselves above it, Aaron gasped as if he had come up from holding his breath for too long. In the space of a hundred feet the temperature had dropped by more than ten degrees. He gave a massive shiver that wracked him from head to toe. But these physical sensations almost fell to the background, compared to the majesty spread out before him. He exhaled softly. He had seen this before, but this view was particularly stunning, and it never failed to awe him.

White cloud formations the size of castles towered around them. The sun bathed everything in an orangey pink glow and the world looked like it was covered in giant piles of downy feathers.

The Dragons glided gently between the pillars of cloud. Aaron felt like he was being slowly turned into an ice statue, but he knew this was doing wonders to bring his fever down, so he endured it. They stayed there until the thin air threatened to trigger a coughing fit, and then Birul drifted back down below the clouds where the breathing was easier. When Aaron felt better, they returned to where Limok and Mirayah were still flying. 

They did this a few times every hour as they flew. Aaron got hopelessly wet each time this happened, but the wind of their passage and the heat of Birul’s inner fire helped dry him off within a couple of minutes each time. Eventually they no longer needed to drift below, for Aaron’s lungs seemed to be temporarily clearing up. He took deep, satisfying breaths of the crisp and metallic-tasting air, savoring them as if they would be his last.

They couldn’t see landmarks anymore with the clouds below them, but they hadn’t been navigating very well before this anyway. At this point all that was left was to trust in the Dragons’ instincts to guide them in the right general direction, and keep a look-out for the Palace. If Aaron tuned himself carefully to Birul and listened to the tilt of his inner compass, he knew that he could sense it somewhere close.

By the time the sun began to set that day, Aaron knew they were within a few miles of it. It was just a question of pinpointing the Palace’s exact location. This, of course, frustrated Mirayah even further. It shouldn’t be this hard to find a building the size of a small city!

Up ahead of them there was the biggest formation of cloud that they had seen yet. It was shaped like a massive anvil and it towered above every other. It was colossal, big enough to fit the entire capitol city of Darí Menara in and still have space left over. Half of it was bathed in glorious salmon-colored light from the setting sun, while the other half was shrouded in royal purple shadow. The Dragons banked to one side, not willing to go into it and risk being caught in its up-and-down-drafts. 

Eventually they just fell to circling the base of it aimlessly. Their internal compasses seemed confused, and Birul’s homing instinct kept pointing him in different directions. They made about four loops of that giant cloud before evening truly began to fall. Mirayah and Aaron sat side-by-side in the saddles, marveling at the clarity of the emerging stars above them. It was a strange and wondrous thing to be a DragonRider. No matter what happened to them because of it, Aaron knew he would always feel privileged to have this life. All the money and glamour he had left behind would never compare to this.

The temperature dropped even more with the setting of the sun, so with a sigh Mirayah called for all four of them to do go down and find a campsite. Aaron could see disappointment on her face. She had promised him that they would find the Palace today, and yet they were still here without home, shelter, food, or help. She looked like she was angry at herself, and losing hope. Aaron told Birul to tell Mirayah-

_“We’ll make it. I know we’re close.”_

At that point the Dragons, who were descending in a slow angled spiral, hit the cloud canopy and they were plunged into pitch blackness. Then, without warning, they emerged on the other side. Pelting curtains of rain barreled into them and the wind began to howl. They had been above the clouds so long, they hadn’t noticed that it was storming below! The Dragons wavered precariously in the whipping wind, struggling to pierce the gloom and see where was safe to land. Limok pulled ahead, filled her barrel of a chest with air, and then exhaled it in a rush of fire, lighting up the world around them like an extended flash of blue lightning. In its light Aaron looked ahead of them, and then shouted hoarsely in glee. Even after the light faded, he was cheering.

The Palace had been right there all along!

…

Mirayah ogled at the dark mass ahead of them. That anvil-head of cloud was hiding the top of a very, very tall mountain that was almost smack-dab in the middle of the range. The mountainside was honeycombed with darkened windows and shrouded caves with tattered curtains. It was obvious to her that this place was inhabited, or had once been. Mirayah hadn’t got a good enough look to tell. All she knew was that they were sleeping under a proper roof tonight, that they would have shelter, that they were safe for a while from the evil that chased them.

A wave of relief crashed into her chest. She grabbed the saddle, and then at the wave of her arm the Dragons tipped forward into a steep dive. She heard Aaron let out a jubilant whoop, and Limok gave a second burst of flame so they could see where they were going. The stream frayed at the end and flew up to meet them, the rapidly cooling cinders bathing their frigid faces in warmth. They saw that the ground was close, and so the Dragons pulled out of their dive and landed in the first clear space they saw.

Through the gloom and pouring rain Mirayah could make out the outline of a carved stone staircase with wide, crumbling steps big enough for Dragon strides. To either side of them was a grassy sward, overgrown with short foliage. This space wrapped around the base of the immense mountain. Behind them lay the dark folds of a forest that covered the valley.

The Dragons mounted the steps toward the dark doorway above them. When they got beneath the shelter of the overhanging roof the Riders dismounted and lit a tree branch for a torch. The flame illuminated a hazy bubble around them, casting broad, sweeping shadows. The double doors in front of them were massive, large enough to comfortably admit even Birul. Dark wood that must have once been hard and shining was now hanging off the rotted hinges. The two massive panels were thick as tree trunks and, at one point, had been carved into a stylization of a Dragon that looked just like the DragonMark. That pattern had long since sunk into a spongy, splintered mess, held together by rusted iron bands.

Mirayah took Aaron’s arm when a gust of wind threatened to blow him over, and drew him closer to the door’s shelter. Between the crooked doors, the inner corridor was shrouded in darkness. The panels had been closed most of the way- a fact which seemed to confuse Aaron. His brow wrinkled as he beheld them, but then he shrugged and went to one of the doors, gesturing Mirayah do the same. They took up positions with their shoulders braced against the metal bands, made eye contact, and then mouthed the count of three to each other. Simultaneously, they threw their weights into the doors and shoved them inward. The wood scraped and sagged horribly, but inch-by-inch they budged open until even Birul’s wide chest could fit through.

Aaron straightened up after setting his door down, then staggered and slipped down to his knees. He was breathing hard as if he’d just run a race. Mirayah immediately knelt next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder to steady him. When he didn’t seem to regain much of his strength she pulled one of his arms over her shoulders, lifting him up and supporting him with her own weight. He leaned on her like a crutch.

“Thanks,” he breathed as they moved inside out of the cold. His voice was frightfully raspy and his eyes were glazed with exhaustion. He continued, 

“We only have to get… down… down the long corridor to the staircase in the center. Just… shout and… help will come…”

“Hey, hey hey hey! What help? What’s in there? Stay with me!” Mirayah urged, shaking him as his face started to go slack. Aaron was barely conscious at this point, and his head hung. His full weight was sinking into her and she adjusted her arm again to support him. He gave his head a shake a few times as if fighting to do as she asked, to stay with her, but it was obviously a losing battle. His breath wheezed. She bit her lip and glanced at Birul, then at Limok, then back to him again. But it seemed that she had no choice but to do as he’d said and hope for the best. She hauled him up further on her shoulder, blew her breath out from between pursed lips, and then stepped forward into the dim confines of the DragonRider Palace.

…

Mirayah gazed at the ruined hall around her with awe. The single wavering flame of her torch illuminated hundreds of feet down the corridor, throwing huge shadows over the pillars and the yawning passageways. The hall marched ahead of her, long and straight, with a lofty ceiling. The white marble floors were cracked and strewn with the rubble of the crumbling walls. Moss and lichen climbed the crooked pillars.

The four travelers edged down the corridor, Aaron nearly limp against Mirayah, the two Dragons walking behind. The water dripping from their clothes and hair sent echoing splok splok splok noises down the passage. Every few hundred feet there were passages branching off, curving this way or that to accommodate the mountain. Mirayah didn’t want to get lost in the network of passages, so she kept going in a straight line like Aaron had said. She was anxious to see what lay at the end of it. Birul was looking around in confusion as if he was expecting someone, but when Limok asked about it, he said nothing. He seemed almost… nervous.

The silence was perfect. In a ruined building like this Mirayah had expected to see signs of encroaching wildlife. But there were no birds, or mice, or even bugs. They seemed to shun this place, either out of respect or out of fear. Perhaps it still smelled of Dragons. All she could hear in the massive empty space was the gentle crackle of the torch flame, the click of the Dragon’s claws on the marble, and her own footsteps as they walked along. Every tiny rustle sent echoes sweeping through the cavernous darkness.

There was a certain eerie beauty to this place, but it was rather macabre as well. She was vaguely sad that she had never been able to see the Palace in all of its glory, when it was teeming with Dragons and the marble shone white and gold and silver.

In a few minutes the light had grown so much that Mirayah barely needed the torch. She paused to stamp the torch’s flame out on the ground. She sensed that there was a much larger chamber ahead, and as they passed through the entryway her eyes widened. Looking up, she realized that the entire mountain had been hollowed out in order to make this Palace. A massive staircase wound up the center of the chamber like a spine. A low railing was the only thing preventing someone from falling to their death off that stair. Crumbling bridges spanned from each landing to the corresponding floor. All along the inner wall were darkened openings to passages just like the ones they’d come from, and between the staircase, the bridges, and the corridors there was enough open space for a full-grown Dragon to fly to the top. Somewhere at the very peak of the mountain there was an enormous skylight letting in shafts of moonlight from above the clouds. 

Mirayah had given a gentle gasp at the sight of this, and she let that breath out slowly through parted lips. Her mind constructed fantasies behind the wondering glass of her eyes, imagining what it would be like to see hundreds of Dragons spiraling up and down that staircase, their Riders bounding down the steps three at a time. What would it be like to watch the white marble floors and walls sparkle in the broad daylight? What would it be like to hear the the crackle of the braziers along the passage walls and the echoing chatter of conversation? What would it be like to see the inhabitants of this Palace go about their daily work, living loving, smiling, and enjoying friends and families that she would never have?

There was a deep sense of regret weighing in her breast. She was bitter, and understandably so. It was lonely to be the last, and even though she had Aaron and Birul now, the four of them were on their own. She didn’t know what she was doing. They had no home- only the ruined remains of this once-great Palace. They were destitute and hungry, scared and desperate. She would have given anything to see another friendly face right now, for Aaron to wake up and tell her what was going on, for anything to happen.

As if her yearning had summoned something, they suddenly heard a set of echoing footsteps. There were six huge passages on the ground floor around them, and as Mirayah looked in surprise and fear from entrance to entrance she couldn’t identify which one it was coming from. Birul’s head whipped around and he let out a rumble, not quite challenging, but unsure. Mirayah prepared to let Aaron drop to the ground and snatch up her weapons if she had to defend them.

Without warning the footsteps clarified and materialized. She thought they must be coming from the corridor and so she turned back towards it, her eyes searching in the dimness for signs of life.

But then, someone cleared their throat behind her.

She yelped and whipped around once more, which elicited a groan from Aaron. To her surprise, the figure of a Dunían man had appeared on the staircase. There was a momentary pause where the two sized each other up, still as statues.

Though his body was swathed in sweeping black robes, she could make out the tall and lean figure beneath them, like that of a dancer. He had a long face, all planes and angles, with a defined jaw and hollow cheeks. There was a grim set to his mouth, as if he was unused to smiling. He regarded her from behind veiled brown eyes that glittered haughtily, as if he had just discovered a curious sort of bug on the bathroom floor and was debating whether or not to squash it. His hair was the same deep reddish-brown as his eyes, short on the sides and swept back neatly in the front. The fine lines on his brow and around his mouth made him look about thirty-five years of age, but the pointed shape of his ears hinted that perhaps he was older than he appeared.

And yet, curiously enough, though he had the look of a Rider about him, Mirayah could see that there was no glimmer of gold or silver under his throat. His robes were open and his tunic bared the pale skin of his collarbone and throat, upon which there was no DragonMark.

The pause went on for what seemed like forever. Birul started forward a step with a spark recognition in his eyes, until the man switched the target of his glare to the Dragon. Birul froze in his tracks, looking puzzled. But the fact that Birul recognized the stranger, that he wasn’t hostile or defensive in his presence, was enough for Mirayah. For a moment, she fished in her mind and then remembered, from way back on the first day she had met Aaron, a name. Aaron had said it once, and then never spoken of it again in her presence.

“Are… are you Tobias?” she wondered, re-adjusting her arm around Aaron and meeting the stranger’s piercing gaze. Desperation and exhaustion made her voice crack. Slowly, the man nodded. Though she didn’t know him, the sense of relief Mirayah felt sent her reeling. He was familiar to Aaron and Birul, he was known, and thus he was presumably benevolent. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and turned her pleading gaze on him.

“Help him. Please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....AAAAAAND scene.
> 
> You're welcome for the cliffhanger! That's the end of the Maelstrom teaser chapters! Worry not, the rest of Book I is finished. And most of Book II as well. But I will be posting none of it here because I'm a cheap asshole :) . Don't worry though, I'm working on getting them published and you can bet your ass that the second I'm picked up for a publishing deal, you'll know!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, I really appreciated it. Again, if you have any constructive criticism, suggestions on style, or comments, feel free to let me know! I welcome all help!


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